Astronomy Archives

December 28, 2020December 28, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

Brines Could be Present on the Surface of Mars for up to 12 Hours, Never for a Full day

This illustration shows Jezero Crater — the landing site of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover — as it may have looked billions of years go on Mars, when it was a lake. An inlet and outlet are also visible on either side of the lake. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

We are extremely interested in the possibility of water on Mars, because where there’s water, there’s the potential for life. But a new study throws a bit of a wet blanket (pun intended) on that tantalizing possibility. Unfortunately, it looks like even the saltiest of brines can only exist on the Martian surface for up to a few hours at a time.

December 26, 2020February 10, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

One of the Largest, Most Complete Einstein Rings Ever Seen. Astronomers Call it the “Molten Ring”

The "Molten Ring" is one of the most complete Einstein Rings ever discovered. Credit: NASA

A very rare astronomical phenomenon has been in the headlines a lot recently, and for good reason. It will be hundreds of years until we can see Jupiter and Saturn this close to one another again. However, there are some even more “truly strange and very rare phenomena” that can currently be observed in our night sky. The only problem is that in order to observe this phenomena, you’ll need access to Hubble.

December 25, 2020December 25, 2020 by Andy Tomaswick

A Single Filament of Gas Has Been Discovered That Stretches 50 Million Light-Years

Minute vibrating strings found in string theory are not the only ones that are of interest to physicists. The Standard Model of particle physics provides for a theory regarding a different type of string – this one is a string of very sparse gas strung over very long distances. In fact, the standard model predicts that a large percentage of “baryonic matter” (i.e. the type that makes up everything we can see and interact with) would be contained in these filaments. And now for the first time, scientists led by a team at the University of Bonn in Germany have detected one of these super long strings of gas.

December 24, 2020January 8, 2021 by David Dickinson

Astronomy 2021: Top Events for the Coming Year

Eclipses, meteor showers, occultations and more in store for the next year of astronomy 2021.

Ready for another exciting year of skywatching? 2020 produced several memorable astronomical events, including a surprise naked eye comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE, the sure-fire Geminid meteors, and a fine, once in a lifetime close pairing of Jupiter and Saturn rounding out the year.

The Sun also awoke from its slumber, as Solar Cycle #25 (finally) got underway in earnest, with the last half of 2020 producing some of the most massive sunspots of recent years. Expect more of the same in 2021, along with increased aurora activity, as we head towards the peak of the 11-year solar maximum in mid-2025.

December 23, 2020December 23, 2020 by Andy Tomaswick

A Proposal for a Neutrino Detection Array Spanning 200,000 Square Kilometers

Sometimes in astronomy the acronym for a project fits it particularly well. That would absolutely be the case for the Giant Radio Array for Neutrino Detection, who hopes to scale up to a size of 200,000 sq km in an effort to measure ultra-high-energy tau-neutrinos. Is it ambitious? Yes, but that doesn’t really stop humanity from exploring when it wants to.

December 21, 2020December 21, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

China’s Planning to Launch a Space-Based Gravitational Wave Observatory in the 2030s: TianQin. Here’s how it’ll Stack up Against LISA

Artist's impression of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Credit: ESA

The successful detection of gravitational waves has been a game-changer for astronomy. And now the new frontier is in space, with satellite-based detection systems currently in development that will uncover some of the universe’s biggest mysteries. And while the team behind LISA is now developing that observatory in space, it just may be outclassed by a rival, TianQin, developed by the Chinese.

December 21, 2020December 21, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

This galaxy took only 500 million years to form

C1-23152 grew to 200 billion suns in just 500 million years. Image via INAF/ HST/ NASA/ ESA.

Galaxies are supposed to build up a very slowly, taking billions of years to acquire their vast bulk. But a newfound galaxy, appearing in the universe when it was only 1.8 billion years old, tells a different tale. It formed stars at a rate hundreds of times greater than the Milky Way, and was able to build itself up to host 200 billion stars in less than 500 million years – perhaps the universe’s greatest speed run.

December 20, 2020February 7, 2022 by Matt Williams

Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” XIV: What is the Aurora Hypothesis?

Credit and Copyright: Stefan Payne-Wardenaar; Magellanic Clouds: Robert Gendler/ESO

Welcome back to our Fermi Paradox series, where we take a look at possible resolutions to Enrico Fermi’s famous question, “Where Is Everybody?” Today, we examine the possibility that the reason for the Great Silence is that colonizing other star systems is hazardous to our health!

In 1950, Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi sat down to lunch with some of his colleagues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he had worked five years prior as part of the Manhattan Project. According to various accounts, the conversation turned to aliens and the recent spate of UFOs. Into this, Fermi issued a statement that would go down in the annals of history: “Where is everybody?“

This became the basis of the Fermi Paradox, which refers to the disparity between high probability estimates for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) and the apparent lack of evidence. Since Fermi’s time, there have been several proposed resolutions to his question, which includes the Aurora Hypothesis that states that just because planets are habitable doesn’t mean that intelligent life can colonize there.

December 19, 2020December 19, 2020 by Andy Tomaswick

The European Extremely Large Telescope Just Got a 10% Budget Boost, Now Costing $1.5 Billion

Funding is an extremely important aspect of any large-scale science project. The whims of financial controllers can greatly expand or completely sink the efforts of hundred or thousands of other workers. Many times, funding announcements for large scientific projects focus on cuts or “cost-savings” which hobble the eventual end system they are trying to build. But recently the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced it had actually increased the budget for the under-construction Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) by 10%.

December 19, 2020December 19, 2020 by Matt Williams

Here are NASA’s Science Priorities for the Artemis Missions

View of the Earth rising above the lunar horizon, taken during the Apollo 11 mission. Credit: NASA

In October of 2024, NASA will send astronauts to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo Era. After establishing orbit with their Orion spacecraft, a team of two astronauts (“the first woman and the next man”) will land in the Moon’s southern polar region. Over the course of a week, these astronauts will explore and investigate one of the region’s many permanently-shadowed craters.

As the first crewed lunar mission in over fifty years, this mission and those that follow will have a robust series of science objectives. These objectives were laid out in the Artemis III Science Definition Team Report, which was released to the public earlier this month. This report is a summary of the science plan prepared at the behest of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD) for the Artemis III mission.