A Glitch Caused Curiosity to Freeze in Place. But It’s Better Now NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover experienced a technical glitch in its stored memory last week, causing it to temporarily lose its sense of direction and freeze in its tracks. But the talented rover repair team back on Earth enabled a fix, and Curiosity is […]
NASA’s Kepler witnesses vampire star system undergoing super-outburst NASA’s Kepler spacecraft was designed to find exoplanets by looking for stars that dim as a planet crosses the star’s face. Fortuitously, the same design makes it ideal for spotting other astronomical transients—objects that brighten or dim over time. A new search of Kepler archival data has […]
NESSI emerges as new tool for exoplanet atmospheres The darkness surrounding the Hale Telescope breaks with a sliver of blue sky as the dome begins to open, screeching with metallic, sci-fi-like sounds atop San Diego County’s Palomar Mountain. The historic observatory smells of the oil pumped in to support the bearings that make this giant […]
Simulations reveal galaxy clusters details Inspired by the science fiction of the spacefaring Romulans of Star Trek, astrophysicists have used XSEDE-allocated supercomputers to develop cosmological computer simulations called RomulusC, where the ‘C’ stands for galaxy cluster. With a focus on black hole physics, RomulusC has produced some of the highest resolution simulations ever of galaxy […]
This is Probably Sandstone Layers on Mars. Absolutely Beautiful NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has been in orbit around Mars for almost 14 years. It carries a variety of instruments with it, including the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) instrument. That instrument has collected thousands of images of Mars. CRISM’s main purpose is […]
Finally! We get to See a View From Inside Boeing’s Starliner During its First Flight Boeing has released a highlight reel made from footage that was taken from the inside of the Starliner capsule during its recent test flight. The post Finally! We get to See a View From Inside Boeing’s Starliner During its First […]
Rosetta Saw the Building Blocks of Life on Comet 67P Why is there so little nitrogen in Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P)? That’s a question scientists asked themselves when they looked at the data from the ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft. In fact, it’s a question they ask themselves every time they measure the gases in a comet’s coma. […]
Astronomers detect large amounts of oxygen in ancient star’s atmosphere An international team of astronomers from the University of California San Diego, the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), and the University of Cambridge have detected large amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere of one of the oldest and most elementally depleted stars known—a “primitive […]
New insights about the brightest explosions in the Universe Swedish and Japanese researchers have, after ten years, found an explanation to the peculiar emission lines seen in one of the brightest supernovae ever observed—SN 2006gy. At the same time they found an explanation for how the supernova arose. phys.org Go to Source
How NASA’s Webb Telescope will continue Spitzer’s legacy As one window to the universe closes, another will open with an even better view. Some of the same planets, stars and galaxies we first saw through the first window will appear in even sharper detail in the one that will soon open. phys.org Go to Source
Betelgeuse is continues to dim, diminishes to 1.506 magnitude Betelgeuse keeps getting dimmer, and everyone is wondering what exactly that means. The star will go supernova at the end of its life, but that’s not projected to happen for tens of thousands of years or so. So what’s causing the dimming? phys.org Go to Source
Astronomers investigate physical properties of the galaxy PGC 26218 By conducting spectroscopic observations, astronomers from China and Spain have investigated physical properties of a nearby lenticular galaxy known as PGC 26218. The new study provides more hints about the origin of starbursts and star formation in this galaxy. Results of the observations were presented in […]
The Evidence is Leaning More and More Towards an Asteroid Ending the Dinosaurs Which camp are you in: volcanoes? Or asteroids? When it comes to the extinction of the dinosaurs, science has whittled it down to those two possibilities. The asteroid strike has been the leading candidate for quite some time now, but those darn […]
Carnival of Space #647 This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Allen Versfeld at his Urban Astronomer blog. Click here to read Carnival of Space #647. And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. […]
Betelgeuse is Continuing to Dim! It’s Down to 1.506 Magnitude Betelgeuse keeps getting dimmer and everyone is wondering what exactly that means. The star will go supernova at the end of its life, but that’s not projected to happen for tens of thousands of years or so. So what’s causing the dimming? Villanova University astronomers […]
Weekly Space Hangout: January 22, 2019 – Dr. Kenneth Carpenter of HST and WFIRST Hosts: Fraser Cain (universetoday.com / @fcain) Allen Versfeld (https://www.urban-astronomer.com/ / @uastronomer) Carolyn Collins Petersen (TheSpaceWriter.com / @spacewriter) Michael Rodruck (@michaelrodruck) This week we welcome Dr. Kenneth Carpenter to the Weekly Space Hangout. Ken is the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Operations Project Scientist and the Ground System […]
Canberra astronomer becomes first Australian to win major US science award in 133 years Lisa Kewley has transformed our understanding of the early years of the Universe, the development of galaxies, and what happens when they collide. phys.org Go to Source
Astronomers find a way to form ‘fast and furious’ planets around tiny stars New astronomy research from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) suggests giant planets could form around small stars much faster than previously thought. phys.org Go to Source
A Twilight Tryst: Venus Meets Neptune in the Dusk Sky Never seen Neptune? It’s time you should, and this weekend offers a fine time to try, as the faintest planet in the solar system approaches the brightest in the dusk sky, for a splendid conjunction of the pair. This approach culminates as a fine conjunction […]
The riddle of the heavenly bursts This cosmic lightning storm is happening all around us. Somewhere in the earthly sky, there is a pulse that flashes and extinguishes in the next moment. These bursts, which must be measured with radio telescopes and last one thousandth of a second, are one of the greatest mysteries of […]
