Astronomy Archives

September 2, 2023September 2, 2023 by Matt Williams

Is Humanity Ready to Realize the Dream of Interstellar Travel?

The 8th Interstellar Symposium was held from July 10th to 13th at McGill University. Credit: Interstellar Research Group (IRG)

For generations, humans have dreamed, speculated, and theorized about the possibility of journeying to distant stars, finding habitable planets around them, and settling down. In time, the children of these bold adventurers would create a new civilization and perhaps even meet the children of Earth. People could eventually journey from one world to another, cultures would mix, and trade and exchanges would become a regular feature. The potential for growth that would come from these exchanges – intellectually, socially, politically, technologically, and economically – would be immeasurable.

Expanding humanity’s reach beyond the Solar System is not just the fevered dream of science fiction writers and futurists. It has also been the subject of very serious scientific research, and interest in the subject is again on the rise. Much like sending crewed missions to Mars, establishing permanent outposts on the Moon, and exploring beyond cislunar space with human astronauts instead of robots – there is a growing sense that interstellar travel could be within reach. But just how ready are we for this bold and adventurous prospect? Whether we are talking about probes vs. crews or technological vs. psychological readiness, is interstellar travel something we are ready to take on?

This was a central question raised at a public outreach event aptly named “Interstellar Travel: Are We Ready?” that took place at the 8th Interstellar Symposium: In Light of Other Suns, held from July 10th to 13th at the University of McGill in Montreal, Quebec. The symposium was hosted by the Interstellar Research Group (IRG), the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), and Breakthrough Initiatives – in coordination with the University of McGill – and featured guest speakers and luminaries from multiple disciplines – ranging from astronomy and astrophysics to astrobiology, geology, and cosmology.

August 31, 2023August 31, 2023 by Evan Gough

Did this Supernova Explode Twice?

Artist view of a binary system before a type Ia supernova. Credit: Adam Makarenko/W. M. Keck Observatory

All supernovae are exploding stars. But the nature of a supernova explosion varies quite a bit. One type, named Type 1a supernovae, involves a binary star where one of the pair is a white dwarf. And while supernovae of all types usually involve a single explosion, astronomers have found something that breaks that mould: A Type 1a supernova that may have detonated twice.

August 29, 2023August 29, 2023 by Matt Williams

JWST Plucks One Single Star out of a Galaxy Seen 12.5 Billion Years Ago

The massive gravity of galaxy cluster MACS0647 acts as a cosmic lens to bend and magnify light from the more distant MACS0647-JD system. Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI

After years of build-up and anticipation, the James Webb Space Telescope finally launched into orbit on December 25th, 2021 (what a Christmas present, huh?). Since then, the stunning images and data it has returned have proven beyond a doubt that it was the best Christmas present ever! After its first year of operations, the JWST has lived up to one of its primary objectives: to observe the first stars and galaxies that populated the Universe. The next-generation observatory has accomplished that by setting new distance records and revealing galaxies that existed less than 1 billion years after the Big Bang!

These studies are essential to charting the evolution of the cosmos and resolving issues with our cosmological models, like the Hubble Tension and the mysteries of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. Well, hang onto your hats because things have reached a new level of awesome! In a recent study, an international team of scientists isolated a well-magnified star candidate in a galaxy that appears as it was almost 12.5 billion years ago. The detection of a star that existed when the Universe was only ~1.2 billion years old showcases the abilities of the JWST and offers a preview of what’s to come!

August 29, 2023August 29, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

A Swarm Of Swimming Microbots Could Be Deployed To Europa’s Ocean

Europa and other ocean worlds in our solar system have recently attracted much attention. They are thought to be some of the most likely places in our solar system for life to have developed off Earth, given the presence of liquid water under their ice sheathes and our understanding of liquid water as one of the necessities for the development of life. Various missions are planned to these ocean worlds, but many suffer from numerous design constraints. Requirements to break through kilometers of ice on a world far from the Sun will do that to any mission. These design constraints sometimes make it difficult for the missions to achieve one of their most important functions – the search for life. But a team of engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory think they have a solution – send forth a swarm of swimming microbots to scour the ocean beneath a main “mothership” bot.

August 24, 2023August 24, 2023 by Scott Alan Johnston

IceCube-Gen2: 8 Cubic Kilometers of Ice, 5 Times the Sensitivity

The IceCube Neutrino Detector is an observatory unlike any other. Using sensors embedded inside a square kilometer chuck of Antarctic ice, it detects tiny particles called neutrinos, which rarely interact with ordinary matter and are incredibly hard to capture. IceCube has had several major successes in the last few years, including this summer’s announcement of a neutrino map of the Milky Way galaxy. But scientists are pushing up against the limits of IceCube’s capabilities, and plans are in the works for IceCube-Gen2: a detector 5 times as sensitive and 8 times as large, with a radio antenna array across four hundred square kilometers. IceCube Gen2 will increase the number of neutrino detections by an order of magnitude, and will be able to better pinpoint the sources from which the neutrinos are emitted.

August 24, 2023August 24, 2023 by Matt Williams

One of Neptune's Dark Spots Finally Seen From Earth

This image shows Neptune observed with the MUSE instrument at ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT). Credit: ESO/P. Irwin et al.

There’s no getting around it: our Solar System’s gas giants all have big, conspicuous spots on their faces. These include Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, Saturn’s Great White Spot, Uranus’ Great Dark Spot, and Neptune’s Great Dark Spot. Far from blemishes or features that tarnish the planets’ natural beauty, these “spots” are caused by massive storms or other processes in the planets’ atmospheres. While they are extremely large by Earth standards, they are difficult to study by anything other than robotic probes that can get close to the planet.

Neptune’s Great Dark Spot was not discovered until NASA’s Voyager 2 probe flew past the planet in 1989 on its way to the edge of the Solar System. Decades later, scientists are still unsure how this storm originated or what mechanisms drive it today. Using the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), a team of astronomers was able to observe the Great Dark Spot for the first time using a ground-based telescope. Their results provided the most detailed data on the spot to date and some interesting insights into the nature and origin of this mysterious feature.

August 23, 2023August 23, 2023 by Laurence Tognetti

Dr. Tracy Becker Honored with 2023 Carl Sagan Medal for Science Communication

2023 Carl Sagan Medal recipient, Dr. Tracy Becker, who is a group leader in the Southwest Research Institute’s Space Science Division. Dr. Becker is a planetary scientist whose research interests include remote observations of space phenomena such as the asteroid system shown here. (Credit: Southwest Research Institute)

This year’s prestigious Carl Sagan Medal, also known as the “Sagan Medal” and named after the late astronomer, Dr. Carl Sagan, has been awarded to Dr. Tracy Becker, who is a planetary scientist in the Space Science Division of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, Texas. The Sagan Medal recipient is chosen by the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and is meant to acknowledge planetary scientists who are not only active in science communication with the general public but have taken enormous strides in helping the general public better understand, and get excited for, the field of planetary science.

August 22, 2023August 22, 2023 by Matt Williams

The Most Compelling Places to Search for Life Will Look Like “Anomalies”

Will it be possible someday for astrobiologists to search for life "as we don't know it"? Credit: NASA/Jenny Mottar

In the past two and a half years, two next-generation telescopes have been sent to space: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the ESA’s Euclid Observatory. Before the decade is over, they will be joined by NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST), Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx), and the ESA’s PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) and ARIEL telescopes. These observatories will rely on advanced optics and instruments to aid in the search and characterization of exoplanets with the ultimate goal of finding habitable planets.

Along with still operational missions, these observatories will gather massive volumes of high-resolution spectroscopic data. Sorting through this data will require cutting-edge machine-learning techniques to look for indications of life and biological processes (aka. biosignatures). In a recent paper, a team of scientists from the Institute for Fundamental Theory at the University of Florida (UF-IFL) recommended that future surveys use machine learning to look for anomalies in the spectra, which could reveal unusual chemical signatures and unknown biosignatures.

August 22, 2023August 22, 2023 by David Dickinson

Catch a Cycle of Lunar Occultations of Antares Starting This Week

Moon v. Antares — The Moon occults Antares Thursday night. Credit: Stellarium.

Most of North America gets to see the Moon blot out Antares Thursday night.

The long drought of lunar bright star occultations ends this week, as the Moon meets the bright star Antares. This event is one of the best bright star versus the Moon occultations for 2023, and is a harbinger for a series of new occultations of the star once every pass, as the Moon swings through Scorpius the Scorpion every lunar synodic period or 29.5 days.

August 19, 2023August 20, 2023 by Matt Williams

Universe Today Interviews Author, Engineer & Technologist Les Johnson About the 8th Interstellar Symposium

This summer, experts in fields ranging from astronomy and astrophysics to astrobiology, astrogeology, and cosmology all convened at the University of McGill for the 8th Interstellar Symposium: In Light of Other Suns. In partnership with McGill, this event was hosted by the Interstellar Research Group (IRG), the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), and Breakthrough Initiatives. Between July 10th and 13th, students, press, and space enthusiasts attended presentations and outreach events that addressed the big questions on interstellar spaceflight exploration.

To learn more, Universe Today sat down with NASA technologist, author, and engineer Les Johnson who attended the event and hosted many of its panel discussions. This included the public outreach event “Interstellar Travel: Are We Ready?” where he and a panel of experts (including Alan Stern, AJ Link, Prof. Philip Lubin, Erika Nesvold, and Trevor Kjorlien) discussed the technological, social, and ethical dimensions of traveling nearby stars. He was also a featured guest for the Science Fiction Author Panel, where he was joined by fellow SF authors Karl Schroeder, Eric Choi, and Sylvain Neuvel.