What’s Happening with Betelgeuse? Astronomers Propose a Specialized Telescope to Watch the Star Every Night An international team of astronomers recommends creating “Betelgeuse Scope” to monitor this mysterious star find out why it has been acting so strangely of late! The post What’s Happening with Betelgeuse? Astronomers Propose a Specialized Telescope to Watch the Star […]
The galaxy with 99.99% dark matter isn’t so mysterious any more The dwarf galaxy known as Dragonfly 44 caused a stir recently: apparently it had way, way more dark matter than any other galaxy. Since this couldn’t be explained by our models of galaxy formation, it seemed like an oddball. But a new analysis reveals […]
The Milky Way galaxy has a clumpy halo The Milky Way galaxy is in the recycling business. phys.org Go to Source
Messier 85 has a peculiar globular cluster system, study finds Astronomers have conducted a study of stellar population and kinematics of globular clusters (GCs) in the galaxy Messier 85, and found that this galaxy hosts a peculiar globular cluster system. The finding is reported in a paper published October 6 on the arXiv pre-print repository. […]
NASA Announces 14 New “Tipping Point” Technologies for its Lunar Exploration NASA recently awarded contracts to fourteen companies to develop technologies that will help them return to the Moon, and stay there! The post NASA Announces 14 New “Tipping Point” Technologies for its Lunar Exploration appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to Source
We actually don’t know how fast the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole is spinning but there might be a way to find out The stars at the center of our galaxy could tell us just how fast our closest supermassive black hole is spinning. The post We actually don’t know how fast the Milky Way’s […]
Great Barrier Reef Has Lost Half of its Coral Over the Last 25 Years A new study found that warmer ocean temperatures driven by climate change have caused Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to lose more than half of its corals since 1995. The researchers say virtually all coral populations along the Great Barrier Reef have […]
Impatient? A Spacecraft Could Get to Titan in Only 2 Years Using a Direct Fusion Drive Fusion power is the technology that is thirty years away, and always will be – according to skeptics at least. Despite its difficult transition into a reliable power source, the nuclear reactions that power the sun have a wide […]
InSight’s ‘Mole’ is Now Completely buried! It’s been a long road for InSight’s Mole. InSight landed on Mars almost two years ago, in November 2018. While the lander’s other instruments are working fine and returning scientific data, the Mole has been struggling to hammer its way into the surface of the planet. After much hard […]
Operating a Rover in Real-time From a Distance There are instances other than pandemics when it is necessary to work remotely. Spacecraft operators are forced to do most of their work remotely while their charges travel throughout the solar system. Sometimes those travels take place a little closer to home. Engineers at DLR, Germany’s space […]
Pluto has Snowcapped Mountains, But Why? We can thank NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft for opening our eyes up to Pluto’s complexity. On July 14th, 2015, the spacecraft came within 12,500 km (7,800 mi) of the dwarf planet. During the flyby, New Horizons was able to characterize Pluto’s atmosphere and its surface. Among the things New Horizons saw […]
Two planets found orbiting a red dwarf Red dwarfs are the coolest kind of star. As such, they potentially allow liquid water to exist on planets that are quite close to them. In the search for habitable worlds beyond the borders of our solar system, this is a big advantage: the distance between an exoplanet […]
Summer is Dust Devil Time on Mars Just like Earth, Mars undergoes seasonal changes due to its axial tilt. And while summer heat on Mars can’t compare with Earth’s, along with the Martian summer warmth comes an increase in small whirling storms known as dust devils. Several spacecraft on or orbiting Mars have captured dust […]
LAMOST releases its sixth data internationally The Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) published its sixth Data Release (DR6 v2) to astronomers worldwide on Sept. 30, according to the National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. DR6 v2 includes all the spectra obtained during the pilot survey through […]
James Webb Telescope will reveal hidden galaxies Two new studies from the University of Melbourne will help the largest, most powerful and complex space telescope ever built to uncover galaxies never before seen by humanity. phys.org Go to Source
New feature found in energy spectrum of universe’s most powerful particles Particles smaller than an atom hurtle through the universe nearly at the speed of light, blasted into space from something, somewhere, in the cosmos. phys.org Go to Source
Supergiant star Betelgeuse smaller, closer than first thought It may be another 100,000 years until the giant red star Betelgeuse dies in a fiery explosion, according to a new study by an international team of researchers. phys.org Go to Source
Elon Musk Shares a View of Starship With Three Raptor Engines Installed The SN8 Starship prototype just got its three Raptor engines, and is now preparing to test fire them. After that, it’s smooth sailing towards the 15 km (50,000 ft) hop test! The post Elon Musk Shares a View of Starship With Three Raptor […]
Weekly Space Hangout: October 14, 2020, Drs. Jane Huang & Jonathan Williams, Protoplanetary Disks This week we are joined by Dr. Jane Huang and Dr. Jonathan Willams from the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA). Dr. Huang, Dr. Williams, and their team recently discovered some surprising information about the size and shape of some […]
Astronomers Report They’ve Detected the Amino Acid Glycine in the Atmosphere of Venus Does it feel like all eyes are on Venus these days? The discovery of the potential biomarker phosphine in the planet’s upper atmosphere last month garnered a lot of attention, as it should. There’s still some uncertainty around what the phosphine discovery […]
