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More Evidence that Europa’s Oceans Could be Habitable At first glance, Jupiter’s moon Europa doesn’t seem much like Earth. It’s a moon, not a planet, and it’s covered in ice. But it does have one important thing in common with Earth: a warm, salty ocean. Now there’s even more evidence that Europa’s sub-surface ocean is habitable. Scientists at NASA have developed a new … Continue reading “More Evidence that Europa’s Oceans Could be Habitable” The post More Evidence that Europa’s Oceans Could be Habitable appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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Array of radio telescopes reveals explosion on the surface of a hot dead star An international group of researchers observed a source of variable gamma rays identified in 2010 by the NASA satellite Fermi. They used a technique called VLBI, that combines data from several radio telescopes on Earth, to produce the sharpest images to date. Surprisingly, the source of gamma rays was a symbiotic nova, a peculiar stellar system known to astronomers as V407 Cyg. The result, with first author Marcello Giroletti (National Institute of Astrophysics INAF, Italy), has been presented at the annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS), and published inRead More →

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Astronaut Drops a Mirror During a Spacewalk. Now There’s Another Piece of Space Junk Oops. Dropping a mirror on Earth is only minor cause for concern, perhaps about the potential of some upcoming bad luck. Dropping a mirror while on a spacewalk means creating a potentially dangerous new piece of space junk, all while thousands of people watch it happen, streaming live.   A small mirror came loose from … Continue reading “Astronaut Drops a Mirror During a Spacewalk. Now There’s Another Piece of Space Junk” The post Astronaut Drops a Mirror During a Spacewalk. Now There’s Another Piece of Space Junk appeared first onRead More →

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The Bare Minimum Number of Martian Settlers? 110 So you want to colonize Mars, huh? Well Mars is a long ways away, and in order for a colony to function that far from Earthly support, things have to be thought out very carefully. Including how many people are needed to make it work. A new study pegs the minimum number of settlers at … Continue reading “The Bare Minimum Number of Martian Settlers? 110” The post The Bare Minimum Number of Martian Settlers? 110 appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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Canada is Going to be Building Canadarm3 for the Artemis Missions When you need a robotic arm in space, you call in the experts. Over the past several decades, the Canadian Space Agency has expertly provided robotic arms for the Space Shuttle and International Space Station. And now it will build the next-generation of robotic systems for going to the Moon, called Canadarm3. The CSA says … Continue reading “Canada is Going to be Building Canadarm3 for the Artemis Missions” The post Canada is Going to be Building Canadarm3 for the Artemis Missions appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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The beautiful mess in Abell 2255 An international team of astrophysicists led by Andrea Botteon from Leiden University, the Netherlands, has shed light on one of the most intricate objects of the radio sky: the galaxy cluster Abell 2255. Thanks to the incredible detailed images obtained with the European radio telescope LOFAR, the scientists have been able to observe details never seen before of the emission from the cluster. The halo in Abell 2255 is not smooth, but contains numerous filaments that have not been seen previously. The result has been presented today at the virtual annual meeting of the European Astronomical Society (EAS) andRead More →

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Giant star spots likely cause of Betelgeuse dimming Betelgeuse, the bright star in the constellation of Orion, has been fascinating astronomers in the recent months because of its unusually strong decline in brightness. Scientists have been discussing a number of scenarios trying to explain its behavior. Now a team led by Thavisha Dharmawardena of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy have shown that most likely unusually large star spots on the surface of Betelgeuse have caused the dimming. Their results rule out the previous conjecture that it was dust, recently ejected by Betelgeuse, which obscured the star. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

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Astronomers investigate chemical composition of a nearby star-forming dwarf galaxy Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have probed the chemical composition of a nearby metal-poor star-forming dwarf galaxy known as JKB 18. Results of the new observations indicate that the galaxy is chemically inhomogeneous. The study was published June 18 on the arXiv pre-print server. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

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Image: Hubble captures galaxy on edge The galaxy known as NGC 5907 stretches wide across this image. Appearing as an elongated line of stars and dark dust, the galaxy is categorized as a spiral galaxy just like our own Milky Way. In this new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, we don’t see the beautiful spiral arms because we are viewing it edge-on, like looking at the rim of a plate. It is for this reason that NGC 5907 is also known as the Knife Edge galaxy. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

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Do We Now Understand Why the Moon’s Near and Far Sides Look So Dramatically Different? The Moon is easily the most well-studied object in the Solar System, (other than Earth, of course.) But it still holds some puzzles for scientists. Why, for instance, is one side of the Moon so different from the other? The Moon is tidally-locked to Earth, so prior to space-flight, we only knew the one side. … Continue reading “Do We Now Understand Why the Moon’s Near and Far Sides Look So Dramatically Different?” The post Do We Now Understand Why the Moon’s Near and Far Sides Look So Dramatically Different?Read More →

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Weekly Space Hangout: June 24, 2020 — Elizabeth Howell & Nicholas Booth, The Search for Life on Mars This week we are airing Fraser’s pre-recorded interview with Elizabeth Howell and Nicholas Booth, co-authors of the new book The Search for Life on Mars: The Greatest Scientific Detective Story of All Time. Their book documents our quest to find life on the Red Planet. Long-time viewers of the WSH will remember Elizabeth as one … Continue reading “Weekly Space Hangout: June 24, 2020 — Elizabeth Howell & Nicholas Booth, The Search for Life on Mars” The post Weekly Space Hangout: June 24, 2020 — Elizabeth HowellRead More →

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NASA Changes its Mind. It Will be Using Previously Flown Crew Dragons and Falcon 9 NASA has announced that starting next year, SpaceX will be able to reuse its Crew Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 boosters to send astronauts to the ISS. The post NASA Changes its Mind. It Will be Using Previously Flown Crew Dragons and Falcon 9 appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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Another Collection of Newly Forming Planetary Systems. This Time from the Gemini Planet Imager Over the next decade, several very powerful telescopes will come online. Observing time on these ‘scopes will be in high demand, and their range of targets will span a whole host of topics in astronomy, astrophysics, and cosomology. One of the topics near the top of the list is exoplanets. But how will astronomers know … Continue reading “Another Collection of Newly Forming Planetary Systems. This Time from the Gemini Planet Imager” The post Another Collection of Newly Forming Planetary Systems. This Time from the Gemini Planet Imager appeared first onRead More →

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Inferring the temperature structure of circumstellar disks from polarized emission Polarized light is a familiar phenomenon because the scattering or reflection of light results in one of its two components being preferentially absorbed. The majority of sunlight on Earth, for example, is preferentially polarized due to scattering in the atmosphere (this helps make polarized sunglasses effective). Electromagnetic radiation from astrophysical sources can also be polarized, typically because of scattering from elongated dust grains that are aligned with each other by the local magnetic fields. These fields are thought to play a major, perhaps even a dominant role in controlling the shapes and motions of interstellarRead More →

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How an Advanced Civilization Could Exploit a Black Hole for Nearly Limitless Energy A black hole as a source of energy? We know black holes as powerful singularities, regions in space time where gravity is so overwhelming that nothing—not even light itself—can escape. About 50 years ago, British physicist Roger Penrose proposed that black holes could be a source of energy. Now, researchers at the University of Glasgow … Continue reading “How an Advanced Civilization Could Exploit a Black Hole for Nearly Limitless Energy” The post How an Advanced Civilization Could Exploit a Black Hole for Nearly Limitless Energy appeared first on Universe Today. UniverseRead More →

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Super-Earths discovered orbiting nearby red dwarf The nearest exoplanets to us provide the best opportunities for detailed study, including searching for evidence of life outside the solar system. In research led by the University of Göttingen, the RedDots team of astronomers has detected a system of super-Earth planets orbiting the nearby star Gliese 887, the brightest red dwarf star in the sky. Super-Earths are planets which have a mass higher than the Earth’s but substantially below those of our local ice giants, Uranus and Neptune. The newly discovered super-Earths lie close to the red dwarf’s habitable zone, where water can exist in liquid form, andRead More →

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Motions in the sun reveal inner workings of sunspot cycle The sun’s magnetic activity follows an 11-year cycle. Over the course of a solar cycle, the sun’s magnetic activity comes and goes. During solar maximum, large sunspots and active regions appear on the sun’s surface. Spectacular loops of hot plasma stretch throughout the sun’s atmosphere and eruptions of particles and radiation shoot into interplanetary space. During solar minimum, the sun calms down considerably. A striking regularity appears in the so-called butterfly diagram, which describes the position of sunspots in a time-latitude plot. At the beginning of a solar cycle, sunspots emerge at mid-latitudes. As theRead More →