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. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
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 SourceRead More →
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 supermassive black hole is spinning but there might be a way to find out appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
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 declined due to repeated “bleaching events” in the past 25 years. They said the … Continue reading “Great Barrier Reef Has Lost Half of its Coral Over the Last 25 Years” The post Great Barrier Reef Has Lost Half of its Coral Over the Last 25 Years appeared first onRead More →
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 variety of uses in other fields. The most obvious is in weapons, where hydrogen bombs are … Continue reading “Impatient? A Spacecraft Could Get to Titan in Only 2 Years Using a Direct Fusion Drive” The post Impatient? A Spacecraft Could Get to Titan in Only 2 Years Using aRead More →
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 work and a lot of patience, … Continue reading “InSight’s ‘Mole’ is Now Completely buried!” The post InSight’s ‘Mole’ is Now Completely buried! appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
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 agency, recently got to take the concept of … Continue reading “Operating a Rover in Real-time From a Distance” The post Operating a Rover in Real-time From a Distance appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
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 was a region of snowcapped mountains. … Continue reading “Pluto has Snowcapped Mountains, But Why?” The post Pluto has Snowcapped Mountains, But Why? appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
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 and its star is a crucial factor for its detection. The closer the two are, the higher the chance that astronomers can detect the planet from Earth. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
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 devils in action, including the Phoenix lander … Continue reading “Summer is Dust Devil Time on Mars” The post Summer is Dust Devil Time on Mars appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
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 the sixth-year regular survey. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
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 SourceRead More →
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 SourceRead More →
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 SourceRead More →
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 Engines Installed appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
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 protoplanetary disks. The post Weekly Space Hangout: October 14, 2020, Drs. Jane Huang & Jonathan Williams, Protoplanetary Disks appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
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 means, though. Now a team of researchers claims they’ve discovered the amino acid … Continue reading “Astronomers Report They’ve Detected the Amino Acid Glycine in the Atmosphere of Venus” The post Astronomers Report They’ve Detected the Amino Acid Glycine in the Atmosphere of Venus appeared first on Universe Today. UniverseRead More →
New M92 stellar stream discovered A team of astronomers using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope discovered a new stellar stream emanating from the M92 globular cluster. This new stream suggests that M92 is actively being disrupted by tidal forces caused by our Milky Way Galaxy. This discovery utilized high quality data obtained as part of the Canada-France-Imaging-Survey (CFIS) using MegaCam at CFHT and from the Pan-STARRS 1 (PS1) survey on Haleakalā, Maui. The discovery of a stellar stream around M92 raises the question of the cluster’s origin and could be used in the future to probe the innermost region of our Galaxy. The team estimates that stellarRead More →
Star clusters are only the tip of the iceberg “Clusters form big families of stars that can stay together for large parts of their lifetime. Today, we know of roughly a few thousand star clusters in the Milky Way, but we only recognize them because of their prominent appearance as rich and tight groups of stars. Given enough time, stars tend to leave their cradle and find themselves surrounded by countless strangers, thereby becoming indistinguishable from their neighbors and hard to identify,” says Stefan Meingast, lead author of the paper published in Astronomy & Astrophysics. “Our Sun is thought to have formed in a starRead More →
Upgraded GMRT measures the mass of hydrogen in distant galaxies A team of astronomers from the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA-TIFR) in Pune, and the Raman Research Institute (RRI), in Bengaluru, has used the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) to measure the atomic hydrogen content of galaxies seen as they were 8 billion years ago, when the universe was young. This is the earliest epoch in the universe for which there is a measurement of the atomic gas content of galaxies. This research has been published in the 14 October 2020 issue of the journal Nature. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
