Taking advantage of the capacities of the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile, astronomers captured this very detailed new image of the Tarantula Nebula and its numerous neighbouring nebulae and star clusters. The Tarantula, which is also known as 30 Doradus, is the brightest and most energetic star-forming region in the Local Group of galaxies. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
Here’s What Really Happened to That Camera That Melted During a Rocket Launch NASA photographers have always understood that taking pictures of space launches is a risky business. No one is more familiar with this than Bill Ingalls, a NASA photographer who has taking pictures for the agency for the past 30 years. Both within the agency and without, his creativity and efforts are well known, as his ability to always know exactly where to set up his cameras to get the perfect shots. Which naturally begs the question, what happened to the camera featured in the image above? This photograph, which shows one ofRead More →
Astronomers Observe a Pulsar 6500 Light-Years From Earth and See Two Separate Flares Coming off its Surface Astronomy can be a tricky business, owing to the sheer distances involved. Luckily, astronomers have developed a number of tools and strategies over the years that help them to study distant objects in greater detail. In addition to ground-based and space-based telescopes, there’s also the technique known as gravitational lensing, where the gravity of an intervening object is used to magnify light coming from a more distant object. Recently, a team of Canadian astronomers used this technique to observe an eclipsing binary millisecond pulsar located about 6500 lightRead More →
Pluto is What You Get When a Billion Comets Smash Together Pluto has been the focus of a lot of attention for more than a decade now. This began shortly after the discovery of Eris in the Kuiper Belt, one of many Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) that led to the “Great Planetary Debate” and the 2006 IAU Resolution. Interest in Pluto also increased considerably thanks to the New Horizons mission, which conducted the first flyby of this “dwarf planet” in July of 2015. The data this mission provided on Pluto is still proving to be a treasure trove for astronomers, allowing for new discoveries aboutRead More →
When thinking about Earth-like exoplanet discoveries, the Kepler space telescope immediately comes to mind. Yet, it is not only Kepler, but also ground-based information from the HARPS-N spectrograph, that allowed the ETAEARTH consortium to obtain information on these planets with a degree of precision never reached before. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
Using a pioneering method, researchers from the Astronomy and Astrophysics Group of the UPC and the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics (IAC) have found a neutron star of about 2.3 solar masses—one of the most massive ever detected. The study was published on the 23rd of May in the Astrophysical Journal and opens a new path of knowledge in many fields of astrophysics and nuclear physics. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
Even after the direct measurement of their gravitational waves, there are still mysteries surrounding black holes. What happens when two black holes merge, or when stars collide with a black hole? This has now been simulated by researchers from Goethe University Frankfurt and the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) using a novel numerical method. The simulation code “ExaHyPE” is designed in such a way that it will be able to calculate gravitational waves on the future generation of exascale supercomputers. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
SPIRou, the new planet-hunting spectropolarimeter developed for the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), has successfully recorded its first starlight. Ten years after it was first designed and following four intensive months of installation at CFHT, this international instrument in which France has played a leading role is on the point of initiating its scientific operations, namely the detection of exoplanets around nearby red dwarf stars and the study of newborn stars and planets. The design and construction of SPIRou involved a number of French laboratories. It was then integrated at IRAP (CNRS/CNES/Université de Toulouse III—Paul Sabatier) before being shipped to Hawaii. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
A star that wanders too close to the supermassive black hole in the center of its galaxy will be torn apart by the black hole’s gravity in a violent cataclysm called a tidal disruption event (TDE), producing a bright flare of radiation. A new study led by theoretical astrophysicists at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute and UC Santa Cruz provides a unified model that explains recent observations of these extreme events. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
Come Vote and Turn this SpaceX LEGO Set into a Reality Remember the really cool Saturn V rocket set released by LEGO last year? Want to help set the direction for the next space-related LEGO set that should get built? Well then, check out SpaceX: The Ultimate Collection. This is a proposed LEGO set designed by Matthew Nolan and Valerie Roche (co-designer of the Saturn V set), consisting of three separate modules: Block 5 Variant Falcon 9 For starters, you’ll get a Block 5 variant of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with its 9 Merlin engines, black interstage and titanium gridfins. The legs actually moveRead More →
Spanish astronomer Salvador Barquin has detected a new binary star system in the Draco constellation. The newly found system, registered by the discoverer in the International Variable Star Index (VSX), is an EW-type eclipsing binary. The finding is reported in a paper published May 16 on arXiv.org. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
At first glance, this image is dominated by the vibrant glow of the swirling spiral to the lower left of the frame. However, this galaxy is far from the most interesting spectacle here—behind it sits a galaxy cluster. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
Two Spacecraft Will Get Closer to the Sun Than Ever Before Our understanding of distant stars has increased dramatically in recent decades. Thanks to improved instruments, scientists are able to see farther and clearer, thus learning more about star systems and the planets that orbit them (aka. extra-solar planets). Unfortunately, it will be some time before we develop the necessary technology to explore these stars up close. But in the meantime, NASA and the ESA are developing missions that will allow us to explore our own Sun like never before. These missions, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and the ESA’s (the European Space Agency) Solar Orbiter,Read More →
Scientists in South Africa on Friday launched the world’s first optical telescope linked to a radio telescope, combining “eyes and ears” to try to unravel the secrets of the universe. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
Our solar system is a tiny but wonderfully familiar corner of the vast, dark universe – we have even been able to land spacecraft on our celestial neighbours. Yet its outer reaches are still remarkably unmapped. Now we have discovered 840 small worlds in the distant and hard-to-explore region beyond Neptune. This is the largest set of discoveries ever made, increasing the number of distant objects with well known paths around the sun by 50%. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
The presence of microbial life in Earth’s stratosphere is not only opening up a new arena in which to study extremophiles, but is increasing the range of possible environments in which we may find life on other planets. This is the conclusion of a new study that summarizes what we know about stratospheric life so far. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
The 12 m radio telescope APEX in Chile has been outfitted with special equipment including broad bandwidth recorders and a stable hydrogen maser clock for performing joint interferometric observations with other telescopes at wavelengths as short as 1.3 mm and the goal to obtain the ultimate picture of the black hole shadow. The addition of APEX to the so-called Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), which until recently consisted of antennas only in the northern hemisphere, reveals new and unprecedented details in the structure of Sgr A* at the centre of the Milky Way. The increased angular resolution provided by the APEX telescope now reveals details inRead More →
Uh oh, the EMDrive Could be Getting Its “Thrust” From Cables and Earth’s Magnetic Field Ever since NASA announced that they had created a prototype of the controversial Radio Frequency Resonant Cavity Thruster (aka. the EM Drive), any and all reported results have been the subject of controversy. Initially, any reported tests were the stuff of rumors and leaks, the results were treated with understandable skepticism. Even after the paper submitted by the Eagleworks team passed peer review, there have still been unanswered questions. Hoping to address this, a team of physicists from TU Dresden – known as the SpaceDrive Project – recently conducted anRead More →
NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft began the 18th observing campaign of its extended mission, K2, on May 12. For the next 82 days, Kepler will stare at clusters of stars, faraway galaxies, and a handful of solar system objects, including comets, objects beyond Neptune, and an asteroid. The Kepler spacecraft is expected to run out of fuel within several months. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
Every galaxy is thought to harbor a supermassive black hole in the center, or nucleus, of the galaxy, and in active galaxies this black hole is fed by infalling matter. This “central engine” is typically surrounded by dusty molecular gas in a doughnut configuration, which hides the black hole and the infalling material from our view along certain viewing directions. The picture of a central engine plus obscuring doughnut is thought to apply to all accreting supermassive black holes, explaining the apparent variety of active galaxies from the very brightest quasars to the lower-luminosity radio galaxies under a single “unified scheme.” Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
