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 →
First symbiotic star detected by Gaia satellite An international team of astronomers reports that the transient Gaia18aen discovered by ESA’s Gaia spacecraft turns out to be a symbiotic star. This makes it the first symbiotic star identified by this astrometric satellite. The finding is detailed in a paper published September 30 on arXiv.org. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
7% of the Stars in the Milky Way’s Center Came From a Single Globular Cluster That Got Too Close and Was Broken Up The heart of the Milky Way can be a mysterious place. A gigantic black hole resides there, and it’s surrounded by a retinue of stars that astronomers call a Nuclear Star Cluster (NSC). The NSC is one of the densest populations of stars in the Universe. There are about 20 million stars in the innermost … Continue reading “7% of the Stars in the Milky Way’s Center Came From a Single Globular Cluster That Got Too Close and Was Broken Up” TheRead More →
The black hole always chirps twice: Scientists find clues to decipher the shape of black holes A team of gravitational wave researchers led by the ARC Center of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav) report that when two black holes collide and merge, the remnant black hole “chirps” not once, but multiple times, emitting gravitational waves—intense ripples in the fabric space and time—that reveal information about its shape. Their study has been published in Communications Physics. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
The origin of Type Ia supernovae revealed by manganese abundances A research team at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) consisting of Visiting Scientist Chiaki Kobayashi, Project Researcher at the time Shing-Chi Leung (currently at the California Institute of Technology), and Senior Scientist Ken’ichi Nomoto have used computer simulations to follow the explosion, nuclear reaction, production of elements, and evolution of elemental abundances in galaxies. As a result, they placed stringent constraints on the origin of Type Ia supernovae. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Astronomers find evidence planets start to form while infant stars are still growing Astronomers have found compelling evidence that planets start to form while infant stars are still growing. The high-resolution image obtained with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) shows a young proto-stellar disk with multiple gaps and rings of dust. This new result, just published in Nature, shows the youngest and most detailed example of dust rings acting as cosmic cradles, where the seeds of planets form and take hold. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
New research explores how super flares affect planets’ habitability Ultraviolet light from giant stellar flares can destroy a planet’s habitability. New research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will help astrobiologists understand how much radiation planets experience during super flares and whether life could exist on worlds beyond our solar system. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
Was the moon magnetized by impact plasmas? The moon, Mercury and many meteorite parent bodies contain a magnetized crust, which is commonly credited to an ancient core dynamo. A longstanding alternative hypothesis suggests the amplification of the interplanetary magnetic field and induced field of the crust (crustal field) via plasma generated through meteoroid impacts. In a new report now published on Science Advances, Rona Oran and a research team in the Departments of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Geosciences and Space Science in the U.S., Germany and Australia showed that although impact plasmas can transiently enhance the field inside the moon, the resulting fields were atRead More →
New 3-D model could explain the formation of a hexagon storm on Saturn With its dazzling system of icy rings, Saturn has been a subject of fascination since ancient times. Even now the sixth planet from the sun holds many mysteries, partly because its distance away makes direct observation difficult and partly because this gas giant (which is multiple times the size of our planet) has a composition and atmosphere, mostly hydrogen and helium, so unlike that of Earth. Learning more about it could yield some insights into the creation of the solar system itself. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →
