The Moon is the Perfect Spot for SETI A recent white paper submitted to the PSA Decadal Survey 2023-2032 recommends that a lunar observatory be built that can search the Universe for signs of intelligent life! The post The Moon is the Perfect Spot for SETI appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Want the Fastest Solar Sail? Drop it Into the Sun First A new study from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy shows how a “Sun Diver,” a light sail that dives closer to the Sun, could make these promising spacecraft much faster! The post Want the Fastest Solar Sail? Drop it Into the Sun First appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Radio Astronomers are Worried About Mega-Constellations and the Square Kilometer Array With all the satellite constellations heading to space in the near future, there are concerns they will interfere with radio telescopes like the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) The post Radio Astronomers are Worried About Mega-Constellations and the Square Kilometer Array appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Just How Bad are Superflares to a Planet’s Habitability? Star’s can be full of surprises; some of them nasty. While our own Sun appears pretty placid, science has shown us that’s not the case. Coronal mass ejections and solar flares are the Sun’s angry side. And the Sun has only a mild case of the flares, compared to some other stars. Some stars experience … Continue reading “Just How Bad are Superflares to a Planet’s Habitability?” The post Just How Bad are Superflares to a Planet’s Habitability? appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Matter makes up exactly 31.5±1.3% of the Universe Weighing the universe is a tricky task, but a team of astronomers have used a clever technique to measure how many galaxy clusters are in the cosmos, and from there come up with a total amount of matter. The answer: 31.5±1.3% of all the energy in the universe. Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally-bound objects … Continue reading “Matter makes up exactly 31.5±1.3% of the Universe” The post Matter makes up exactly 31.5±1.3% of the Universe appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
The legacy of of the Spitzer Space Telescope To understand the significance of the Spitzer Space Telescope on the understanding of our solar system, think of what the steam engine meant for the industrial revolution. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Simulation Helps Explain Saturn’s Mysterious Hexagon A new study of the mysterious hexagon-shaped storm at Saturn’s north pole suggests this phenomenon is actually the result of activity occurring across the entire planet. In a new paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists say that the unnatural-looking hurricane occurs when atmospheric flows across Saturn create large and … Continue reading “Simulation Helps Explain Saturn’s Mysterious Hexagon” The post Simulation Helps Explain Saturn’s Mysterious Hexagon appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
An Amazing Sky Mosaic Courtesy of Stellina…and a New Telescope from Vaonis Check out this stunning new deep-sky panoramic and new light-weight ‘smartscope,’ courtesy of Vaonis. The post An Amazing Sky Mosaic Courtesy of Stellina…and a New Telescope from Vaonis appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Hubble sees swirls of forming stars At around 60 million light-years from Earth, the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy, NGC 1365, is captured beautifully in this image by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Located in the constellation of Fornax (the Furnace), the blue and fiery orange swirls show us where stars have just formed and the dusty sites of future stellar nurseries. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Astronomers produce largest 3-D catalog of galaxies A team of astronomers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Institute for Astronomy (IfA) has produced the world’s largest three-dimensional astronomical imaging catalog of stars, galaxies and quasars. The team used data from UH’s Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System or Pan-STARRS1 (PS1) on Haleakalā. The PS1 3π survey is the world’s largest deep multi-color optical survey, spanning three-quarters of the sky. IfA astronomers applied novel computational tools to the catalog, to decipher which of the 3 billion objects are stars, galaxies or quasars. For the galaxies, the software also derived estimates of their distances. phys.orgRead More →
Planets Don’t Wait for Their Star to Form First It looks like we may have to update our theories on how stars and planets form in new solar systems. A team of astronomers has discovered young planets forming in a solar system that’s only about 500,000 years old. Prior to this discovery, astronomers thought that stars are well into their adult life of fusion … Continue reading “Planets Don’t Wait for Their Star to Form First” The post Planets Don’t Wait for Their Star to Form First appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Weekly Space Hangout: October 7, 2020, Dr. David Warmflash Discusses Mixed-Reality Surgical System This week we welcome back to the show Dr. David Warmflash. Since he was last with us, David has been named as Co-Principal Investigator and Medical Director for a new NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBRI) Phase I study titled “Mixed-Reality Holographic Training System to Enable High-Value Surgical and Complex Medical Procedures by Astronauts.” The post Weekly Space Hangout: October 7, 2020, Dr. David Warmflash Discusses Mixed-Reality Surgical System appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Finding vaporized metal in the air of an exoplanet WASP-121b is an exoplanet located 850 light years from Earth, orbiting its star in less than two days—a process that takes Earth a year to complete. WASP-121b is very close to its star—about 40 times closer than Earth to the Sun. This close proximity is also the main reason for its immensely high temperature of around 2,500 to 3,000 degrees Celsius. This makes it an ideal object of study to learn more about ultra-hot worlds. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Perseverance Rover will peer beneath Mars’ surface After touching down on the Red Planet Feb. 18, 2021, NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover will scour Jezero Crater to help us understand its geologic history and search for signs of past microbial life. But the six-wheeled robot won’t be looking just at the surface of Mars: The rover will peer deep below it with a ground-penetrating radar called RIMFAX. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Gravitational-Wave Lensing is Possible, but it’s Going to be Incredibly Difficult to Detect Because gravitational waves travel at the speed of light, they can be lensed just as light waves are. But observing this effect will be difficult. The post Gravitational-Wave Lensing is Possible, but it’s Going to be Incredibly Difficult to Detect appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →
Signals from distant stars connect optical atomic clocks across Earth for the first time Using radio telescopes observing distant stars, scientists have connected optical atomic clocks on different continents. The results were published in the scientific journal Nature Physics by an international collaboration between 33 astronomers and clock experts at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, Japan), the Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRIM, Italy), the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF, Italy), and the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM, France). phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Time Flies. NASA Releases a Mosaic of TESS’ View of the Northern Sky After Two Years of Operation NASA’s TESS planet-finding spacecraft completed its primary mission about 3 months ago. TESS’s (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) job was to search the brightest stars nearest to Earth for transiting exoplanets. It found 74 confirmed exoplanets, with another ~1200 candidates awaiting confirmation. It surveyed 75% of the sky during its two-year primary mission, and now NASA … Continue reading “Time Flies. NASA Releases a Mosaic of TESS’ View of the Northern Sky After Two Years of Operation” The post Time Flies. NASA Releases a Mosaic of TESS’ ViewRead More →
Astronomers Will Be Able to Use the World’s Biggest Radio Telescope to Search for Signals from Extraterrestrial Civilizations Back in April, we reported on how a collaboration between the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Breakthrough Listen Initiative, and the SETI Institute planned to use the new Five-hundred-meter Aperture radio Telescope (FAST) to search for signs of extraterrestrial life. We now caught up with another of the project scientists to flesh out some more … Continue reading “Astronomers Will Be Able to Use the World’s Biggest Radio Telescope to Search for Signals from Extraterrestrial Civilizations” The post Astronomers Will Be Able to Use the World’s BiggestRead More →
New measurements of the solar spectrum verify Einstein’s theory of General Relativity An international team of researchers led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has measured, with unprecedented accuracy, the gravitational redshift of the Sun, a change in frequency of the lines in the solar spectrum which is produced when the light escapes from the gravitational field of the Sun on its way to Earth. This work, which verifies one of the predictions of Einstein’s General Relativity, is to be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Researchers find ‘missing link’ between magnetars and rotation-powered pulsars Researchers from the RIKEN Cluster for Pioneering Research have made observations of a new magnetar, called Swift J1818.0-1607, which challenges current knowledge about two types of extreme stars, known as magnetars and pulsars. The research, just published in the Astrophysical Journal, was done using the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), an X-ray instrument aboard the International Space Station. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
