Astronomy Archives

November 10, 2019November 10, 2019 by Matt Williams

Watch a Simulation of a Galaxy, From the Big Bang Until the Present Day

Since the mid-20th century, scientists have had a pretty good idea of how the Universe came to be. Cosmic expansion and the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) lent credibility to the Big Bang Theory, and the accelerating rate of expansion led to theories about Dark Energy. Still, there is much about the early Universe that scientists still don’t know, which requires that they rely on simulations on cosmic evolution.

This has traditionally posed a bit of a problem since the limitations of computing meant that simulation could either be large scale or detailed, but not both. However, a team of scientists from Germany and the United States recently completed the most detailed large-scale simulation to date. Known as TNG50, this state-of-the-art simulation will allow researchers to study how the cosmos evolved in both detail and a large scale.

November 8, 2019November 8, 2019 by Matt Williams

TESS Has Now Captured Almost the Entire Southern Sky. Here’s a Mosaic Made of 15,347 Photographs

On April 18th, 2018, NASA’s Transitting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) took to space for the first time. By August, it began capturing the light curves of distant stars for signs of planetary transits, effectively picking up where the Kepler Space Telescope left off. Now, just a few months away from the end of its primary mission, NASA has put a year’s worth of images of the southern sky together to create the beautiful mosaic you see here.

November 6, 2019February 12, 2020 by Evan Gough

What Voyager 2 Learned After Spending a Year in Interstellar Space

An artist concept depicting one of NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft, humanity's farthest and longest-lived spacecraft. Voyager 2 just lost contact with Earth while Voyager 1 is still reporting back. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Only two of humanity’s spacecraft have left the Solar System: NASA’s Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Voyager 1 left the heliosphere behind in 2012, while Voyager 2 did the same on Nov. 5th, 2018. Now Voyager 2 has been in interstellar space for one year, and five new papers are presenting the scientific results from that one year.

November 5, 2019November 5, 2019 by Evan Gough

It Seems Impossible, But Somehow This Planet Survived its Star’s Red Giant Phase

An artists's illustration of TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Image Credit: NASA

Astronomers working with TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) data have found a planet where it shouldn’t be: in the space recently filled by its host star when it was a red giant.

November 5, 2019November 5, 2019 by Matt Williams

The First Stars Formed Very Quickly

Credit: Max Planck Institute for Astronomy

Ever since astronomers realized that the Universe is in a constant state of expansion and that a massive explosion likely started it all 13.8 billion years ago (the Big Bang), there have been unresolved questions about when and how the first stars formed. Based on data gathered by NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and similar missions, this is believed to have happened about 100 million years after the Big Bang.

Much of the details of how this complex process worked have remained a mystery. However, new evidence gathered by a team led by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy indicates that the first stars must have formed rather quickly. Using data from the Magellan Telescopes at Las Campanas Observatory, the team observed a cloud of gas where star formation was taking place just 850 million years after the Big Bang.

November 4, 2019November 4, 2019 by Matt Williams

Boeing’s Starliner Performed its Abort Test Today. One Parachute Failed to Deploy

For years, NASA has been working to restore domestic launch capability to the US and send astronauts to the Moon and beyond. A crucial part of this is the development of next-generation crew capsules that can carry crews and payloads to space. These include Lockheed Martin’s Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) and the Crew Space Transportation (CST) -100 Starliner currently being developed by Boeing.

Earlier today (on Monday, Nov. 4th), the CST-100 passed a critical milestone with a successful end-to-end test of its abort system. The Pad Abort Test took place at Launch Complex 32 at the US Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. When crewed missions to space begin using the CST-100, this system will ensure that astronauts will be carried to safety in the unlikely event of an emergency before liftoff.

November 4, 2019November 5, 2019 by David Dickinson

Our Guide to the November 11th, 2019 Transit of Mercury Across the Sun

Mercury transits the Sun in 2016. Image credit and copyright: David Blanchflower.

One of the finest spectacles in astronomy is to witness the passage of one object in front of another. This can transpire as an eclipse, an occultation, or a rare event known as a planetary transit. We get a shot at seeing just such a singular event next Monday on November 11^th, as a transit of Mercury across the face of Sol occurs for the last time this decade.

November 3, 2019November 4, 2019 by Matt Williams

The Lowest Mass Black Hole has Been Found, only 3.3 Times the Mass of the Sun

An artist's rendering of the black hole astrophysicists identified in this study. The black hole (bottom left) is seen near a red giant star. The discovery shows there may be an entire class of black holes astronomers did not know existed. Credit: Ohio State/Jason Shults

Black holes are one of the most awesome and mysterious forces of nature. At the same time, they are fundamental to our understanding of astrophysics. Not only are black holes the result of particularly massive stars that go supernova at the end of their lives, they are also key to our understanding of General Relativity and are believed to have played a role in cosmic evolution.

Because of this, astronomers have diligently been trying to create a census of black holes in the Milky Way galaxy for many years. However, new research indicates that astronomers may have overlooked an entire class of black holes. This comes from a recent discovery where a team of astronomers observed a black hole that is just over three Solar masses, making it the smallest black hole discovered to date.

November 1, 2019November 1, 2019 by Matt Williams

Asteroid Hygiea is Round Enough That it Could Qualify as a Dwarf Planet, the Smallest in the Solar System

A new SPHERE/VLT image of Hygiea, which could be the Solar System’s smallest dwarf planet yet. As an object in the main asteroid belt, Hygiea satisfies right away three of the four requirements to be classified as a dwarf planet: it orbits around the Sun, it is not a moon and, unlike a planet, it has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit. The final requirement is that it have enough mass that its own gravity pulls it into a roughly spherical shape. This is what VLT observations have now revealed about Hygiea.

Within the Main Asteroid Belt, there are a number of larger bodies that have defied traditional classification. The largest among them is Ceres, which is followed by Vesta, Pallas, and Hygeia. Until recently, Ceres was thought to be the only object in the Main Belt large enough to undergo hydrostatic equilibrium – where an object is sufficiently massive that its gravity causes it to collapse into a roughly spherical shape.

However, it now seems that there is another body in the Main Belt that has earned the designation of “dwarf planet”. Using data from the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument at the Very Large Telescope (VLT), an international team of astronomers found compelling evidence that Hygeia is actually round, making it the smallest dwarf planet in the Solar System.

November 1, 2019November 1, 2019 by Matt Williams

Mars 2020 Stands Up on its Wheels For The First Time

This coming July, the Mars 2020 rover will launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and begin its journey to the Red Planet. After it touches down in the Jezero Crater, the rover will commence science operations similar to what Curiosity has been doing since 2012. This will consist of driving over rough terrain, sampling the atmosphere, collecting drill samples, and subjecting them to chemical analysis.

In order to get it ready for this mission, the engineering team over at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are putting the rover through its paces. On Oct. 8th, this included placing the full weight of the rover on its legs and wheels for the first time ever. This event, which was tantamount to an infant standing for the very first time, was captured with a time-lapse video that you can see below.