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Dust Devils Have Left Dark Streaks All Over This Martian Crater There may be no life on Mars, but there’s still a lot going on there. The Martian surface is home to different geological process, which overlap and even compete with each other to shape the planet. Orbiters with powerful cameras give us an excellent view of Mars’ changing surface. The HiRISE (High Resolution Science Imaging … Continue reading “Dust Devils Have Left Dark Streaks All Over This Martian Crater” The post Dust Devils Have Left Dark Streaks All Over This Martian Crater appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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Nutrient-Poor and Energy-Starved. How Life Might Survive at the Extremes in the Solar System Our growing understanding of extremophiles here on Earth has opened up new possibilities in astrobiology. Scientists are taking another look at resource-poor worlds that appeared like they could never support life. One team of researchers is studying a nutrient-poor region of Mexico to try to understand how organisms thrive in challenging environments. The researchers worked … Continue reading “Nutrient-Poor and Energy-Starved. How Life Might Survive at the Extremes in the Solar System” The post Nutrient-Poor and Energy-Starved. How Life Might Survive at the Extremes in the Solar System appeared first onRead More →

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How Interferometry Works, and Why it’s so Powerful for Astronomy When astronomers talk about an optical telescope, they often mention the size of its mirror. That’s because the larger your mirror, the sharper your view of the heavens can be. It’s known as resolving power, and it is due to a property of light known as diffraction. When light passes through an opening, such as … Continue reading “How Interferometry Works, and Why it’s so Powerful for Astronomy” The post How Interferometry Works, and Why it’s so Powerful for Astronomy appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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XMM-Newton reveals giant flare from a tiny star A star of about eight percent the Sun’s mass has been caught emitting an enormous ‘super flare’ of X-rays—a dramatic high-energy eruption that poses a fundamental problem for astronomers, who did not think it possible on stars that small. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

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Japan Is Sending a Lander to Phobos Sending a mission to moons of Mars has been on the wish list for mission planners and space enthusiasts for quite some time. For the past few years, however, a team of Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) engineers and scientists have been working on putting such a mission together. Now, JAXA announced this week that the … Continue reading “Japan Is Sending a Lander to Phobos” The post Japan Is Sending a Lander to Phobos appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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SETI Researchers Release Petabytes of Data in the Search For Aliens Breakthrough Listen, the most extensive SETI survey in history, has just made its second release of data, and its once again the biggest ever made! The post SETI Researchers Release Petabytes of Data in the Search For Aliens appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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Both Stars in This Binary System Have Accretion Disks Around Them Stars exhibit all sorts of behaviors as they evolve. Small red dwarfs smolder for billions or even trillions of years. Massive stars burn hot and bright but don’t last long. And then of course there are supernovae. Some other stars go through a period of intense flaring when young, and those young flaring stars have … Continue reading “Both Stars in This Binary System Have Accretion Disks Around Them” The post Both Stars in This Binary System Have Accretion Disks Around Them appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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Beyond the brim, Sombrero Galaxy’s halo suggests turbulent past Surprising new data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope suggests the smooth, settled “brim” of the Sombrero galaxy’s disk may be concealing a turbulent past. Hubble’s sharpness and sensitivity resolves tens of thousands of individual stars in the Sombrero’s vast, extended halo, the region beyond a galaxy’s central portion, typically made of older stars. These latest observations of the Sombrero are turning conventional theory on its head, showing only a tiny fraction of older, metal-poor stars in the halo, plus an unexpected abundance of metal-rich stars typically found only in a galaxy’s disk, and the central bulge.Read More →

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Sub-Neptune sized planet validated with the habitable-zone planet finder A signal originally detected by the Kepler spacecraft has been validated as an exoplanet using the Habitable-zone Planet Finder (HPF), an astronomical spectrograph built by a Penn State team and recently installed on the 10m Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory in Texas. The HPF provides the highest precision measurements to date of infrared signals from nearby low-mass stars, and astronomers used it to validate the candidate planet by excluding all possibilities of contaminating signals to very high level of probability. The details of the findings appear in the Astronomical Journal. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

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How newborn stars prepare for the birth of planets An international team of astronomers used two of the most powerful radio telescopes in the world to create more than three hundred images of planet-forming disks around very young stars in the Orion Clouds. These images reveal new details about the birthplaces of planets and the earliest stages of star formation. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

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Stargazing with computers: What machine learning can teach us about the cosmos Gazing up at the night sky in a rural area, you’ll probably see the shining moon surrounded by stars. If you’re lucky, you might spot the furthest thing visible with the naked eye—the Andromeda galaxy. It’s the nearest neighbor to our galaxy, the Milky Way. But that’s just the tiniest fraction of what’s out there. When the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera at the National Science Foundation’s Vera Rubin Observatory turns on in 2022, it will take photos of 37 billion galaxies and stars over theRead More →

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Weekly Space Hangout: February 19, 2020 – John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic Hosts: Fraser Cain (universetoday.com / @fcain) Dr. Brian Koberlein (BrianKoberlein.com / @BrianKoberlein) Carolyn Collins Petersen (TheSpaceWriter.com / @spacewriter) Michael Rodruck (@michaelrodruck) Tonight we are airing Fraser’s interview with John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic Technology. John earned his Master of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. While at Carnegie Mellon, John led … Continue reading “Weekly Space Hangout: February 19, 2020 – John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic” The post Weekly Space Hangout: February 19, 2020 – John Thornton, CEO of Astrobotic appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go toRead More →

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Salt Water Might Still be Able to Collect on the Surface of Mars a Few Days a Year A new study from the PSI indicates that around Mars’ equator, salt water could form on the surface for a few days out of the year. The post Salt Water Might Still be Able to Collect on the Surface of Mars a Few Days a Year appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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ESA is Considering a Mission to Give Advanced Warnings of Solar Storms The Sun is not exactly placid, though it appears pretty peaceful in the quick glances we can steal with our naked eyes. In reality though, the Sun is a dynamic, chaotic body, spraying out solar wind and radiation and erupting in great sheets of plasma. Living in a technological society next to all that is … Continue reading “ESA is Considering a Mission to Give Advanced Warnings of Solar Storms” The post ESA is Considering a Mission to Give Advanced Warnings of Solar Storms appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go toRead More →

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There Could be Meteors Traveling at a Fraction of the Speed of Light When They Hit the Atmosphere According to a new study by a pair of Harvard astrophysicists, it is possible that meteors traveling close to the speed of light regularly rain down on Earth’s atmosphere The post There Could be Meteors Traveling at a Fraction of the Speed of Light When They Hit the Atmosphere appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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There Could be Meteors Traveling at Close to the Speed of Light When They Hit the Atmosphere According to a new study by a pair of Harvard astrophysicists, it is possible that meteors traveling close to the speed of light regularly rain down on Earth’s atmosphere The post There Could be Meteors Traveling at Close to the Speed of Light When They Hit the Atmosphere appeared first on Universe Today. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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Long-term multi-wavelength observations shed more light on blazar 1ES 1215+303 An international team of astronomers has performed a decade-long, multi-wavelength monitoring campaign of the blazar 1ES 1215+303. Results of this extensive study provide more insights into the nature of emission from this source. The research is detailed in a paper published February 10 on arXiv.org. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →