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China Postpones the Chang’e-7 Mission We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again – space is hard. Another example, albeit lacking in the destructive displays of some past examples, is China’s recent delay of its Chang’e-7 lunar mission. The agency announced the mission would miss its late-August launch window with a very brief press release from the China National Space Administration and the China Manned Space Engineering Office. While that means a slight delay in China’s plan for the Moon, it’s only a matter of time before the cornerstone of the robotic lunar exploration program is back on the launch pad. Universe Today GoRead More →

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Quiet Black Holes With a Stellar Companion Raise Questions About How They Form Gaia has discovered three stellar mass black holes, each with a small stellar companion. For two of these systems the companions orbit closer that we would expect. Just how these systems form is a bit of a mysteries, but there are clues. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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The DESI legacy imaging survey releases the largest 2D map of the universe In 2012, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) was commissioned to measure the effect of dark energy, the mysterious force driving the expansion of the cosmos. Since then, the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys have obtained optical images of tens of millions of galaxies and quasars, including through NOIRLab’s Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO). In recent news, the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys team made its 11th data release (DR 11), constituting the largest-ever 2D map of the universe. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

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Pair of white dwarfs locked in 6-minute orbit might one day be observed by gravitational waves Current gravitational-wave observatories aren’t sensitive enough to capture the gravitational waves of binary stars. They can only see the gravitational chirps of black holes just as they are merging. But that will change as more sensitive instruments are developed. Recently, a team of astronomers discovered a binary white dwarf system that could be a good target for advanced gravitational-wave observatories. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

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Rare pulsar unleashes 114 giant pulses in a single hour Astronomers have detected extreme, never-before-seen behavior from a rare kind of pulsar and stumbled on a surprising link to one of astronomy’s biggest current mysteries. Using 174 hours of radio observations, researchers detected PSR J1227-4853, a rapidly spinning neutron star known as a “transitional millisecond pulsar,” which unleashes hundreds of ultrashort, ultrapowerful “giant pulses.” Their paper was published in The Astrophysical Journal on July 31. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

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Do black holes have hidden hair? Scientists find a new way to check When two black holes crash together and merge, the newly formed black hole rings like a bell, sending out gravitational waves with specific frequencies that fade over time. This brief, fading pattern of waves is called ringdown, and it may hold secrets about what is hiding around black holes. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

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The 20th data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), the largest multispectral imaging and spectroscopic redshift survey of the cosmos, has released its 20th data release (DR 20). It is also the third release of the survey’s fifth phase (SDSS-V), representing a massive operational expansion of the legacy established with prior releases. This milestone provides an unprecedented look at the stars, the interstellar medium (ISM) and distant galaxies that make up the cosmos. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

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A Pair of White Dwarfs Locked in a Six-Minute Orbit Might One Day Be Observed By Gravitational Waves Future gravitational wave observatories will be able to see the gravitational waves of close-orbiting binary stars. A newly studied white dwarf system could be one of the first systems we observe. Universe Today Go to SourceRead More →

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Snapping the Sun’s Grand Magnetic Border at 0.3 AU Out in the solar system, there is a giant rippling curtain of charged particles that is actually the largest structure in our solar system. Known as the Heliospheric Current Sheet (HCS), it marks the spot where the sun flips its magnetic north and south poles, and grows directly out of giant, glowing loops of plasma on its surface called helmet streamers. However, so far, studies of it have only occurred near Earth, using space-based instruments such as SoHo and Wind. But now, a new paper from Keiichi Ogasawara of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and hisRead More →

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‘Quiet’ pulsar suddenly reveals three glitches in 15 years of observations Using more than 15 years of observations from the Parkes radio telescope, astronomers detected three rotational glitches in the pulsar PSR J1637−4642—a young neutron star that had shown no signs of glitches since its discovery. The three glitches included one that changed its rotation rate by nearly 3 parts per million. Their paper was posted to the arXiv preprint server on Aug. 20. It has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

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FAST finds two mysterious hydrogen clouds with no visible stars Astronomers have found two clouds of hydrogen near the Whirlpool galaxy that appear to contain almost no stars. The clouds, discovered with China’s FAST radio telescope, each contain roughly 3 million times the mass of the sun in hydrogen but have no detectable optical counterpart. Their properties are outlined in a new paper published in the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal on Aug. 4. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

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A black hole as light as 40 tons can exist inside a star if dark matter helps In 1974, Stephen Hawking made a prediction that transformed our understanding of black holes. Black holes, he showed, are not truly black: They slowly lose energy through a quantum process now known as Hawking radiation. The lighter the black hole, the faster it evaporates. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

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Could life exist on Venus? Peptides survive harsh acid. The planet Venus is arguably the most mischievous planetary body in the solar system. This is because like Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, Venus is shrouded in a thick atmosphere that can’t be viewed with optical telescopes and require radar images to see the surface. Unlike Titan, whose atmosphere looks quite dull, Venus’s swirling and awe-inspiring clouds give observers the impression that its surface is covered in wonderous features. However, the truth is far from ideal, as Venus’s surface is a living hell with searing temperatures and crushing pressures. But, unlike its surface and Titan, Venus’s atmosphereRead More →

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Turbulent times for star formation in Stephan’s Quintet Star formation in galaxies is closely linked to molecular gas. In the distant past, when galaxy interactions were more common, these encounters compressed molecular gas, causing dense clouds to collapse under their own gravity and form new stars. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

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Betelgeuse’s atmosphere is becoming spotty and asymmetric—and a nearby companion could be shaping the pattern For the first time since its dramatic dimming in 2020, a team of astronomers has observed the inner atmosphere of Betelgeuse using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA). Led by Bill Dent at the University of Manchester, the team found that the giant star’s inner atmosphere has become increasingly uneven and asymmetric, in a way that could be connected to a far smaller companion star. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →