Hubble Examines Earth’s Reflection as an ‘Exoplanet’ During a Lunar Eclipse What would we look for in a distant exoplanet in the hunt for Earth-like worlds, and perhaps life? A recent observation carried out by the Hubble Space Telescope found tell-tale signatures from our home planet by looking at a familiar source under extraordinary circumstances: […]
Seeing baby stars at every stage of their formation Stars form from the collapse of dense clouds of gas and dust, which makes it very hard for astronomers to watch the process unfold. Recently the ALMA telescope has revealed a treasure trove of embryonic stars in the Taurus Molecular Cloud, illuminating how baby stars are […]
Lava Tubes on the Moon and Mars are Really, Really Big. Big Enough to Fit an Entire Planetary Base Could lava tubes on the Moon and Mars play a role in establishing a human presence on those worlds? Possibly, according to a team of researchers. Their new study shows that lunar and Martian lava tubes […]
Broken cable damages giant radio telescope in Puerto Rico A broken cable caused severe damage at Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, causing a suspension of operations for one of the world’s largest single-dish radio telescopes, officials said Tuesday. phys.org Go to Source
Astronomers Think They’ve Found the Neutron Star Remnant From Supernova 1987a Recent observations and theortetical work have brought us one step closer to resolving the mystery of what lies at the center of the supernova SN 1987A The post Astronomers Think They’ve Found the Neutron Star Remnant From Supernova 1987a appeared first on Universe Today. […]
InSight’s Mole Is In! The InSight lander is making progress on Mars. After many months of struggle and careful adaptation, the InSight lander’s ‘Mole’ is finally into the ground. There’s still more delicate work to be done, and they’re not at operating depth yet. But after such a long, arduous affair, this feels like a […]
The Martian Sky Pulses in Ultraviolet Every Night There’s a surprising phenomenon taking place in Mars’ atmosphere: during the spring and fall seasons on the Red Planet, large areas of the sky pulse in ultraviolet light, exactly three times every night. “The ultraviolet glow … is as bright in the ultraviolet as Earth’s northern […]
NASA’s planet Hunter completes its primary mission On July 4, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) finished its primary mission, imaging about 75% of the starry sky as part of a two-year-long survey. In capturing this giant mosaic, TESS has found 66 new exoplanets, or worlds beyond our solar system, as well as nearly 2,100 […]
Radio relics detected in the galaxy cluster SPT-CL J2032−5627 Using the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), astronomers have performed observations of a cluster of galaxies known as SPT-CL J2032−5627. They identified two radio relics that could improve our knowledge about this cluster. The finding is reported in a paper published August 3 on arXiv.org. […]
Classifying galaxies with artificial intelligence Astronomers have applied artificial intelligence (AI) to ultra-wide field-of-view images of the distant Universe captured by the Subaru Telescope, and have achieved a very high accuracy for finding and classifying spiral galaxies in those images. This technique, in combination with citizen science, is expected to yield further discoveries in the […]
Mystery solved: Bright areas on Ceres come from salty water below NASA’s Dawn spacecraft gave scientists extraordinary close-up views of the dwarf planet Ceres, which lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. By the time the mission ended in October 2018, the orbiter had dipped to less than 22 miles (35 kilometers) […]
Dwarf planet Ceres is an ocean world: study The dwarf planet Ceres—long believed to be a barren space rock—is an ocean world with reservoirs of sea water beneath its surface, the results of a major exploration mission showed Monday. phys.org Go to Source
Inside the ice giants of space A new theoretical method paves the way to modeling the interior of the ice giants Uranus and Neptune, thanks to computer simulations on the water contained within them. The tool, developed by scientists from SISSA in Trieste and the University of California at Los Angeles and recently published in […]
A magnetar has been discovered throwing off bizarre blasts of radiation. Is this where fast radio bursts come from? Magnetars are the ultimate aggressive star: intense magnetic fields, massive outbursts, the works. We’ve known that magnetars are capable of producing some of the most powerful blasts in the cosmos, but new observations reveal a different […]
Globular cluster Palomar 3 probed by Russian astronomers By conducting deep photometric and medium-resolution spectroscopic observations, Russian astronomers have investigated Palomar 3, a distant galactic globular cluster. Results of this observational campaign provide more insights into the properties of this cluster, which could be essential in improving our understanding of its origin. The study was […]
Image: Barred spiral galaxy NGC 4907 The barred spiral galaxy known as NGC 4907 shows its starry face from 270 million light-years away to anyone who can see it from the Northern Hemisphere. This is a new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the face-on galaxy, displaying its beautiful spiral arms, wound loosely around its […]
Asteroids Somehow Migrated Past Jupiter During the Solar System’s Early History In baseball, players receive a Gold Glove award if they show outstanding fielding play throughout the course of the season. Basically, they can’t let any ball get past them when playing in the field. If a Gold Glove award was handed to planets in […]
An exoplanet has been found for the first time using radio telescopes Astronomers have found an extrasolar planet around a main sequence star. Which isn’t a big deal. With a radio telescope. Which is. Over the past couple decades astronomers have spotted thousands of exoplanets using a variety of techniques. There’s the ever-popular transit method, […]
Neutron stars of different masses can make a real mess when they collide When neutron stars collide, they go out with a tremendous bang, fueling an explosion up to a thousand times more powerful than a supernova. But sometimes they go out with a whimper, and a recent suite of simulations is showing why: they […]
Why Can Black Hole Binaries Have Dramatically Different Masses? Multiple Generations of Mergers Black hole mergers with very different masses tell us how small mergers can give rise to even larger ones. The post Why Can Black Hole Binaries Have Dramatically Different Masses? Multiple Generations of Mergers appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go […]
