The first discovered interstellar visitor to our solar system has had a violent past, which is causing it to tumble around chaotically, a Queen’s University Belfast scientist has discovered. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
Researchers Just Scanned 14 Worlds From the Kepler Mission for “Technosignatures”, Evidence of Advanced Civilizations When it comes to looking for life on extra-solar planets, scientists rely on what is known as the “low-hanging fruit” approach. In lieu of being able to observe these planets directly or up close, they are forced to look for “biosignatures” – substances that indicate that life could exist there. Given that Earth is the only planet (that we know of) that can support life, these include carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and water. However, while the presence of these elements are a good way of gauging “habitability”, they are not necessarilyRead More →
Carnival of Space #547 It’s that time again! This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by Pamela Hoffman at the Everyday Spacer blog. Click here to read Carnival of Space #547. And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past Carnivals of Space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to susie@wshcrew.space, and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want toRead More →
The universe is highly magnetic, with everything from stars to planets to galaxies producing their own magnetic fields. Astrophysicists have long puzzled over these surprisingly strong and long-lived fields, with theories and simulations seeking a mechanism that explains their generation. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
In the world’s driest desert, an unassuming black box called “Espresso” is about to begin a very big mission: scouring the universe for planets like ours to find signs of life beyond Earth. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
A star about 100 light years away in the Pisces constellation, GJ 9827, hosts what may be one of the most massive and dense super-Earth planets detected to date according to new research led by Carnegie’s Johanna Teske. This new information provides evidence to help astronomers better understand the process by which such planets form. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
The Solar System Probably has Thousands of Captured Interstellar Asteroids On October 19th, 2017, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System-1 (Pan-STARRS-1) in Hawaii announced the first-ever detection of an interstellar asteroid, named 1I/2017 U1 (aka. ‘Oumuamua). Originally thought to be a comet, this interstellar visitor quickly became the focus of follow-up studies that sought to determine its origin, structure, composition, and rule out the possibility that it was an alien spacecraft! While ‘Oumuamua is the first known example of an interstellar asteroid reaching our Solar System, scientists have long suspected that such visitors are a regular occurrence. Aiming to determine just how common,Read More →
Weekly Space Hangout – Feb 7, 2018: Weekly News Roundup Hosts: Dr. Kimberly Cartier (KimberlyCartier.org / @AstroKimCartier ) Dr. Morgan Rehnberg (MorganRehnberg.com / @MorganRehnberg & ChartYourWorld.org) While Fraser and Paul are in Iceland, Kimberly and Morgan hold down the fort, and discuss the major news of the week – like the SpaceX Falcon Heavy successful launch! Announcements: If you would like to join the Weekly Space Hangout Crew, visit their site here and sign up. They’re a great team who can help you join our online discussions! We record the Weekly Space Hangout every Wednesday at 5:00 pm Pacific / 8:00 pm Eastern. You canRead More →
An extremely deep multi-band optical image from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT, Hawaii. USA) casts a new light on the formation process of the famous group of 5 colliding galaxies. The image reveals structures undetected thus far, in particular a very extended red halo composed of old stars, and centered on an elliptical galaxy, NGC 7317, which had been ignored in previous studies on the dynamics of the global collision. These results are published in the Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society by a team from the Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg (France), CEA Saclay (France) and the Lund Observatory (Sweden). Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
James Webb Makes The Journey From Houston To Los Angeles; Last Stop Before It Heads To The Launch Facility In 2019 The two halves of the James Webb Space Telescope are now in the same location and ready to take the next step on JWST’s journey. On February 2nd, Webb’s Optical Telescope and Integrated Science instrument module (OTIS) arrived at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Redondo Beach, California. The integrated spacecraft, consisting of the spacecraft bus and sunshield, were already there, waiting for OTIS so they could join together and become a complete spacecraft. “The team will begin the final stages of integration of theRead More →
There is a car, in space. Launched by a rocket with reused parts that landed back on Earth by a billionaire who wants to colonize Mars. In the last hour or so, SpaceX successfully completed the first liftoff of the Falcon Heavy rocket. This is a beefed up version of its successful Falcon-9 rocket, where three boosters are strapped together, firing 27 Merlin engines simultaneously with the capability of launching 54 tonnes of cargo into space. And Liftoff for Falcon Heavy. Credit: SpaceX The Falcon Heavy is now the most powerful rocket currently operating on Earth, by a factor of two. On board the FalconRead More →
Here’s a Prediction About the Orbit Musk’s Tesla is Going to Take Through the Solar System After multiple delays, SpaceX recently announced that the inaugural flight of their Falcon Heavy rocket would take place this Tuesday, February 6th, 2018. This rocket, which is the heaviest launch vehicle in the SpaceX fleet (and the most powerful operational rocket in the world right now), is not only central to the company’s vision of reusable rockets, but also to Musk’s long-term vision of sending humans to Mars. As a result, people all over the world have been tuning in to watch the coverage of the event, and eagerlyRead More →
A compact detector technology applicable to all types of cross-disciplinary scientific investigations has found a home on a new CubeSat mission designed to find the electromagnetic counterparts of events that generate gravitational waves. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
An international team of astronomers has found three new millisecond pulsars (MSPs) in a Milky Way globular cluster called Terzan 5. The new discovery increases the number of identified pulsars in Terzan 5 to 37 and makes this cluster the most efficient factory of MSPs in the galaxy known to date. The finding is reported January 30 in a paper published on arXiv.org. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
Astronomers at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) using the HINODE spacecraft observed the strongest magnetic field ever directly measured on the surface of the Sun. Analyzing data for 5 days around the appearance of this record breaking magnetic field, the astronomers determined that it was generated as a result of gas outflow from one sunspot pushing against another sunspot. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
The final results from the ESA satellite LISA Pathfinder (LPF) have been published today. Using data taken before the end of the mission in July 2017, the LPF team – including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover and Leibniz Universität Hannover – significantly improved first results published in mid 2016. LPF now has exceeded the requirements for key technologies for LISA, the future gravitational-wave observatory in space, by more than a factor of two over the entire observation band. LISA is scheduled to launch into space in 2034 as an ESA mission and will “listen” to low-frequency gravitational waves fromRead More →
Researchers have demonstrated how a gas escapes ice at an extremely cold temperature, providing insight into star formation in interstellar clouds. The mechanism by which hydrogen sulphide is released as gas in interstellar molecular clouds is described by scientists in Japan and Germany, in the journal Nature Astronomy. The process, known as chemical desorption, is more efficient than previously believed, and this has implications for the understanding of star formation in molecular clouds. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →
Good News For The Search For Life, The Trappist System Might Be Rich In Water When we finally find life somewhere out there beyond Earth, it’ll be at the end of a long search. Life probably won’t announce its presence to us, we’ll have to follow a long chain of clues to find it. Like scientists keep telling us, at the start of that chain of clues is water. The discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system last year generated a lot of excitement. 7 planets orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1, only 40 light years from Earth. At the time, astronomers thought at least some of them wereRead More →
ESA’s ExoMars has Completed its Aerobraking Maneuvers to Bring it Into a Circular 400 km Orbit Around Mars In March of 2016, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the ExoMars (Exobiology on Mars) mission into space. A joint project between the ESA and Roscosmos, this two-part mission consisted of the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and the Schiaparelli lander, both of which arrived in orbit around Mars in October of 2016. While Schiaparelli crashed while attempting to land, the TGO has gone on to accomplish some impressive feats. For example, in March of 2017, the orbiter commenced a series of aerobraking maneuvers, where it started toRead More →
TRAPPIST-1 Planets Probably Rich in Water A new study has found that the seven planets orbiting the nearby ultra-cool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 are all made mostly of rock, and some could potentially hold more water than Earth. The planets’ densities, now known much more precisely than before, suggest that some of them could have up to 5 percent of their mass in the form of water — about 250 times more than Earth’s oceans. The hotter planets closest to their parent star are likely to have dense steamy atmospheres and the more distant ones probably have icy surfaces. In terms of size, density and theRead More →
