Space and astronomy news
Living in space comes with risks. For astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS), those risks occasionally make themselves intrusively apparent.
Earlier this month, European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen snapped a photo of the Canadarm2, in which damage from a micrometeorite impact is clearly visible.
Continue reading “Ouch. Canadarm2 Took a Direct Hit From a Micrometeorite”
The way astronomers study planets in our own solar system is surprisingly similar to the way they study exoplanets, despite the latter being orders of magnitude more distant. The key is spectroscopy – examining the wavelengths of light that reach a telescope from a planet’s atmosphere. Different molecules allow different wavelengths to pass through, creating unique patterns in the spectrum and giving scientists clues about the composition of an atmosphere.
Of course, for planets nearby, we can get more details by visiting them – but this is expensive and difficult – we haven’t visited Uranus since Voyager 2 in 1986, for example, so for all intents and purposes, studying Uranus today is done the same way as studying an exoplanet: with a telescope.
A recent review of planetary atmospheres, in our solar system and elsewhere, reveals the incredible complexity and diversity of weather in our solar system, and what we might expect to find around other stars – but also what we don’t yet understand about our near neighbours: there’s plenty of unknowns.
So let’s take a weather-watcher’s tour of the solar system:
Continue reading “Weather in the Solar System Can Teach Us About Weather on Exoplanets”
On September 24, 2023, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned a precious sample of rocky material from asteroid Bennu to Earth. The capsule landed safely under its main parachute, but it arrived more than a minute early. The cause: a small drogue parachute, designed to slow the spacecraft down prior to the main chute’s deployment, failed to open. After an investigation into the mishap, NASA believes they have determined the cause of the (happily non-catastrophic) failure.
Continue reading “OSIRIS-REx Failed to Deploy its Drogue Chute Properly. Now NASA has Figured out Why”
Last September, NASA purposefully smashed a spacecraft into Dimorphos, a 160m-wide space rock orbiting a larger asteroid named Didymos. The goal of the mission, called DART (the Double Asteroid Redirection Test), was to demonstrate humanity’s ability to redirect hazardous asteroids away from Earth. That part of the mission was a success above and beyond all expectations. But now scientists are also learning more about the origins of the two asteroids. A study conducted in the wake of the DART impact found that Dimorphos is made from the same material as Didymos, and that the pair of asteroids likely originated from a single body.
Continue reading “Dimorphos is Probably a Piece of Didymos”
Astronauts need to eat, and they need to breathe. That means, for long-duration missions, they are going to need to bring plants with them. But not all plants are created equal, and not all can survive the harsh conditions of space. One that might thrive on long spacefaring voyages also happens to be the smallest flowering plant on Earth.
Continue reading “Earth's Smallest Flowering Plant Can Handle 20X Earth's Gravity”
Everyone loves a good mystery, and astronomers have just uncovered a new one in a nearby supermassive galaxy called M87. Like most galaxies, M87 regularly plays host to a smattering of stellar explosions called novae, each the result of a star stealing material from a neighbour. M87 also features a massive jet of plasma blasting out into deep space from the galactic core. These phenomena: the jet and the novae, are unrelated astronomical occurrences, or so scientists believed. But astronomers recently discovered that the novae in M87 seem to be uncharacteristically aligned along the jet, instead of scattered randomly throughout the galaxy. Is the jet somehow triggering nova explosions?
It might be, but the mystery is: how?
Continue reading “M87's Jet is Triggering Novae”
As of this month, astronomers have discovered 5,506 exoplanets orbiting other stars. That number is growing daily, and astronomers are hoping, among other things, to find Earth-like worlds. But will we know one when we see it? How might we be able to tell an Earth-like garden from a Venus-like pressure cooker from upwards of 40 light years away? Is JWST up to the challenge?
Continue reading “Can JWST Tell the Difference Between an Exo-Earth and an Exo-Venus?”
The face of astronomy is changing. Though narrow-field point-and-shoot astronomy still matters (JWST anyone?), large wide-field surveys promise to be the powerhouses of discovery in the coming decades, especially with the advent of machine learning.
A recently developed machine learning program, called ASTRONOMALY, scanned nearly four million galaxy images from the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS), discovering 1635 anomalies including 18 previously unidentified sources with “highly unusual morphology.” It is a sign of things to come: a partnership between humans and software that can do better observational science than either could do on their own.
Continue reading “Machine Learning Algorithms Can Find Anomalous Needles in Cosmic Haystacks”
One of the miracles of modern astronomy is the ability to ‘see’ wavelengths of light that human eyes can’t. Last week, astronomers put that superpower to good use and released five new images showcasing the universe in every wavelength from X-ray to infrared.
Combining data from both Earth- and ground-based telescopes, the five images reveal a diverse set of astronomical phenomena, including the galactic centre, the death throes of stars, and distant galaxies traversing the cosmos.
Continue reading “A Collection of New Images Reveal X-Rays Across the Universe”
Pulsars are the lighthouses of the universe. These rotating dead stars shoot twin jets of radiation from their poles, usually with a predictable rhythm. But sometimes pulsars behave strangely, and one pulsar in particular has had astronomers scratching their heads for years. It’s called PSR J1023+0038, and a decade ago, it shut off its jets and began oscillating between two brightness levels in an unpredictable pattern. Now, scientists think they understand why: it is busy eating a neighboring star.
Continue reading “A Bizarre Pulsar Switches Between Two Brightness Modes. Astronomers Finally Figured Out Why.”