Space and astronomy news
Meteorites strike Earth every day. It’s estimated that about 100 – 300 metric tonnes of material strike our planet every year. Most of it consists of sand-grain sized dust that burns up in the atmosphere, but each year a few thousand will reach Earth’s surface.
Continue reading “Most Mars Meteorites Came From Five Craters”
We often talk about Jupiter’s Great Red Spot quite candidly but forget that hurricanes can be devastating, destructive forces here on Earth. Hurricane Milton is a reminder of the awful effects here on Earth. It came out of nowhere, appearing in the Gulf of Mexico as a tropical storm and two days later was a category 5 hurricane. It tracked a course and hit land near Siesta Key in Florida. NASA have been tracking the storm from space, recording high sea temperatures that fuelled the storm allowing it to grow. Images have been released from the ISS showing the sheer enormity of the hurricane.
Continue reading “NASA Reveals the Mind-Boggling Scale of Hurricane Milton seen from Space”
The total number of exoplanets discovered to date totals 5,288. Among them are a host of rocky, Earth-like exoplanets but none of them seem to have atmospheres. It’s a fairly challenging observation to make but a team of researchers think they’ve come up with a new, simpler technique. It involves measuring the combined temperature of a star and the exoplanet just before the planet passes behind. If it’s lower than expected, the planet is likely to have an atmosphere regulating its temperature!
Continue reading “A New Way to Detect Rocky Exoplanet Atmospheres”
Mars has captured our imagination for centuries. Ever since the invention of the telescope our imagination has often drifted toward the possibility of life on Mars. Exploration of the red planet has often revealed that Mars once had plenty of water on its surface but it’s no longer there. Now NASA’s Curiosity rover has found deposits of carbon-rich minerals that could give us a much needed clue.
Continue reading “How Did Mars Become Uninhabitable?”
As comets travel along their orbit they dump material along the way. A stream of debris known as the Taurid swarm has been keeping astronomers attention. It’s thought the debris is the remains of comet Encke which has also been fuelling the Taurid meteor shower. The swarm is believed to be composed of mostly harmless, tiny objects but there has been concern that there may be some larger, kilometre size chunks. Thankfully, new observations reveal there are of the order of 9-14 of these 1km rocks.
Continue reading “Good News. Comet Encke Only Threw a Handful of Giant Space Rocks in our Direction”
NASA has sent a whole host of spacecraft across the Solar System and even beyond. They range from crewed ships to orbit and to the Moon to robotic explorers. Among them are a range of mission classes from Flagships to Discovery Class programs. Now a new category has been announced: Probe Explorers. This new category will fill the gap between Flagship and smaller missions. Among them are two proposed missions; the Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite and the Probe Far-Infrared Mission for Astrophysics.
Continue reading “NASA Announces a New Class of Space Missions: Probe Explorers”
A long time ago, the Milky Way Galaxy was busy being a prodigious star-formation engine. In those times, it turned out dozens or hundreds of stars per year. These days, it’s rather more quiescent, cranking out only a few per year. Astronomers want to understand the Milky Way’s star-birth history, so they focus on some of the more recent star litters to study. One of them is Westerlund 1, a young so-called “super star cluster” that looks compact and contains a diverse array of older stars. It was part of a burst of star creation around 4 to 5 million years ago.
Continue reading “The Open Star Cluster Westerlund 1, Seen by Webb”
TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has been on the lookout for alien worlds since 2018. It has just hit the news again having identified an extreme triple star system where two stars orbit each other every 1.8 days. The third component circles them both in 25 days – this puts the entire system within the orbit of Mercury with a little wriggle room to spare! To visual observers, it looks like a single star but the power of TESS revealed a flicker as the stars line up and pass one another along our line of sight. Eventually, the two inner stars will merge, triggering a supernova event!
Continue reading “TESS Finds a Triple Star System that Could Fit within Mercury’s Orbit”
Every second in the Universe, more than 3,000 new stars form as clouds of dust and gas undergo gravitational collapse. Afterward, the remaining dust and gas settle into a swirling disk that feeds the star’s growth and eventually accretes to form planets – otherwise known as a protoplanetary disk. While this model, known as the Nebular Hypothesis, is the most widely accepted theory, the exact processes that give rise to stars and planetary systems are not yet fully understood. Shedding light on these processes is one of the many objectives of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
In a recent study, an international team of astronomers led by University of Arizona researchers and supported by scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy (MPIA) used the JWST’s advanced infrared optics to examine protoplanetary disks around new stars. These observations provided the most detailed insights into the gas flows that sculpt and shape protoplanetary disks over time. They also confirm what scientists have theorized for a long time and offer clues about what our Solar System looked like roughly 4.6 billion years ago.
Continue reading “The JWST Reveals New Things About How Planetary Systems Form”
China have a roadmap to sent astronauts to the Moon in 2030 and when they do, they are going with a very definite nod to the Chinese origins to the rocket! Their officials have unveiled the new look Chinese space suit with all the mod cons but with a design that is somewhat reminiscent of Chinese armour. There will some fabulous features like the close and long distance field of view visor, a chest control panel and a protective material to shield against the harmful lunar environment.
Continue reading “China Unveils its Lunar Spacesuit”