Astronomy Archives

January 26, 2021February 6, 2021 by Paul M. Sutter

Away From the Light Pollution of the Inner Solar System, New Horizons was Able to see how Dark the Universe Really is

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft (when it still lived on the Earth).

Just how dark is the universe, anyway? It’s a pretty hard thing to measure when we’re sitting this close to the sun. But NASA’s New Horizons probe is so far away that the images it takes of the distant universe are able to deliver the most accurate measurement ever of the universe’s diffuse background light.

January 25, 2021January 25, 2021 by Paul M. Sutter

Astronomers Hoped to see Evidence of Dark Matter Particles Inside Betelgeuse. No Luck

An artist's impression of Betelgeuse. Its surface is covered by large star spots, which reduce its brightness. During their pulsations, such stars regularly release gas into their surroundings, which condenses into dust. Image Credit: MPIA graphics department

Axions are a hypothetical particle that might explain the existence of dark matter. But it might occasionally interact with normal matter, especially in the cores of stars. A team of physicists have searched for evidence of axions in Betelgeuse and come up with nothing. It doesn’t mean that the axion doesn’t exist, but it does mean that it will be harder to find.

January 25, 2021January 25, 2021 by Evan Gough

Why do Planetary Nebulae Look the Way They Do?

Hubble was recently retrained on NGC 6302, known as the "Butterfly Nebula," to observe it across a more complete spectrum of light, from near-ultraviolet to near-infrared, helping researchers better understand the mechanics at work in its technicolor "wings" of gas. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Kastner (RIT)

Planetary nebulae are the most beautiful objects in the night sky. Their gossamer shells of gas are otherworldly and evocative. They captivate the eye, and viewers need no scientific knowledge to get drawn in.

How are they created, and why do they look so beautiful?

January 25, 2021January 25, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Lightweight Iodine Thruster Could Help Solve Space Junk Problem

Rocket fuel is one of the most important components of any maneuverable spacecraft. That is also true for ion thrusters – while they don’t use traditional chemical fuel, they do still need a feed source for their ion engines. Now, a team from ThrustMe, a spinoff of the École Polytechnique and CNRS, has designed a type of ion thruster using a completely novel propellant – iodine.

January 24, 2021January 26, 2021 by Matt Williams

A New Idea to Harness Energy From Black Holes

Fifty years ago, English mathematical physicist and Nobel-prize winner Roger Penrose proposed that energy could be extracted from the space around a rotating black hole. Known as the ergosphere, this region lies just outside an event horizon, the boundary within which nothing can escape a black hole’s gravitational pull (even light). It is also here where infalling matter is accelerated to incredible speeds and emits all kinds of energy.

This became known as the Penrose Process, which many theorists have since expanded on. The latest comes from a study conducted by researchers from Columbia University and the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile. With support from organizations like NASA, they demonstrated how a better understanding of the physics at work around spinning black holes could allow us to harness their energy someday.

January 24, 2021January 24, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

3-D Printing on the Moon. From Regolith to Paste to Useful Objects and Structures

In the academic literature, review papers are widespread, and can help ground discussion on a specific topic by bringing new researchers up to speed as well as allowing experienced hands to catch up on some topics they might have otherwise missed. Anytime a new one on a topic of space exploration is published, it helps move understanding of the entire discipline forward, even if it might not directly contribute to furthering research itself. With that in mind, it can also be interesting for laymen to read them as well, as they are an excellent way to be quickly brought up to speed on a certain topic.

So if you happen to be interested in lunar exploration, or additive manufacturing more generally, you might be interested in a new review paper from a team at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology. It reviews the current state of the art in additive manufacturing (AM) technology and how it might be applied to building useful tools and structures on the lunar surface.

January 24, 2021January 24, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Massive Binary Stars Huddle Up Surprisingly Quickly

Dancing is a favorite pastime of many couples. Swinging around a dance floor, using the laws of physics to twirl at just the right moment, and hopefully not step on any toes, is an art unto itself. The same laws of physics that govern couples on a dance floor also govern (to some extent) the much larger dance of stellar objects. And recently astronomers have started to understand the intricacies of how binary stars dance with each other – turns out it’s not quite as simple as doing the tango.

January 23, 2021January 23, 2021 by Brian Koberlein

In Theory, Supermassive Black Holes Could get Even More Supermassive

Artist view of a stupendously large black hole. Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anders

Our universe contains some enormous black holes. The supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy has a mass of 4 million Suns, but it’s rather small as galactic black holes go. Many galactic black holes have a billion solar masses, and the most massive known black hole is estimated to have a mass of nearly 70 billion Suns. But just how big can a black hole get?

January 22, 2021January 22, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Only 31 Magnetars Have Ever Been Discovered. This one is Extra Strange. It’s Also a Pulsar

Some of the most stunningly powerful objects in the sky aren’t necessarily the prettiest to look at. But their secrets can allow humanity to glimpse some of the more intricate details of the universe that are exposed in their extreme environs. Any time we find one of these unique objects it’s a cause for celebration, and recently astronomers have found an extremely unique object that is both a magnetar and a pulsar, making it one of only 5 ever found.

January 19, 2021January 22, 2021 by Ralph Crewe

Astronomers Confirm That Darksat is About Half as Bright as an Unpainted Starlink

Space-based internet service is poised to revolutionize the internet and bring high-speed connectivity to countless communities worldwide. Programs like SpaceX’s Starlink paint a picture of a bright future for the citizens of the world. Like many revolutionary technological advances, there is a dark side to Starlink.

The constellation of hundreds (and eventually thousands) of satellites reflect light back to the Earth, impinging on the darkness of the skies for professional astronomers and stargazers alike. Astronomers report images and data being disrupted by bright streaks left from the satellites passing through their observational fields of view. One potential solution to this issue is applying a dark coating to the reflective antennae on the satellites’ ground-facing side. In January of 2020, SpaceX launched the experimental DarkSat to test the effectiveness of such a coating. Astronomers around the world observed the new satellite. In December of 2020, a team from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) released a paper in The Astrophysical Journal showing detailed measurements of the efficacy of DarkSat.