Astronomy Archives

October 29, 2024October 29, 2024 by Matt Williams

Astronomers Discover Potential New Building Block of Organic Matter in Interstellar Space

A new study expands on the classical theory of panspermia, addressing whether or not life could be distributed on a galactic scale. Credit: NASA

Carbon is the building block for all life on Earth and accounts for approximately 45–50% of all dry biomass. When bonded with elements like hydrogen, it produces the organic molecules known as hydrocarbons. When bonded with hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus, it produces pyrimidines and purines, the very basis for DNA. The carbon cycle, where carbon atoms continually travel from the atmosphere to the Earth and back again, is also integral to maintaining life on Earth over time.

As a result, scientists believe that carbon should be easy to find in space, but this is not always the case. While it has been observed in many places, astronomers have not found it in the volumes they would expect to. However, a new study by an international team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has revealed a new type of complex molecule in interstellar space. Known as 1-cyanoprene, this discovery could reveal where the building blocks of life can be found and how they evolve.

October 29, 2024October 29, 2024 by David Dickinson

Death of a Comet: S1 Didn’t Survive its Sungrazing Plummet

Jaeger Comet — Comet S1 ATLAS from October 19th. Credit: Michael Jaeger and Gerald Rhemann.

Sungrazer C/2024 S1 ATLAS broke apart at perihelion.

Alas, a ‘Great Halloween Comet’ was not to be. The Universe teased us just a bit this month, with the potential promise of a second naked eye comet in October: C/2024 S1 ATLAS. Discovered on the night of September 27th by the Asteroid Terrestrial Last-alert impact System (ATLAS) all-sky survey, this inbound comet was surprisingly bright and active for its relative distance from the Sun at the time of discovery. This gave the comet the potential to do what few sungrazers have done: survive a blisteringly close perihelion passage near the Sun.

October 24, 2024October 24, 2024 by Evan Gough

Did Some of Earth’s Water Come from the Solar Wind?

The Sun releases a steady stream of charged particles called the Solar Wind. When it strikes unprotected surfaces like asteroids or the Moon, it can change the chemistry and even create water molecules. Image Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith

The source of Earth’s water is an enduring mystery that extends to exoplanets and the notion of habitability. In broad terms, Earth’s water was either part of the planet from the beginning of its formation in the solar nebula or delivered later, maybe by asteroids and comets.

New research suggests that the Sun’s relentless solar wind could’ve played a role.

October 24, 2024October 24, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Building Bricks out of Lunar Regolith

Samples of the lunar bricks. /China Media Group

It was 1969 that humans first set foot on the Moon. Now, over 50 years later we are setting sights on building lunar bases. The ability to complete that goal is dependent on either transporting significant amounts of material to the Moon to construct bases or somehow utilising raw lunar materials. A team of Chinese researchers have developed a technique to create bricks from material that is very similar to the soil found on the Moon. The hope is that the lunar soil can in the future, be used to build bricks on the Moon.

October 23, 2024October 23, 2024 by Evan Gough

The Webb Discovers a Rich Population of Brown Dwarfs Outside the Milky Way

Near the outskirts of the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy roughly 200 000 light-years from Earth, lies the young star cluster NGC 602, which is featured in this new image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. This image includes data from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-InfraRed Camera) and MIRI (Mid-InfraRed Instrument). Image Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, P. Zeidler, E. Sabbi, A. Nota, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb)

This stunning image of a star cluster in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is more than just a pretty picture. It’s part of a scientific effort to understand star formation in an environment different from ours. The young star cluster is called NGC 602, and it’s very young, only about 2 or 3 million years old.

October 23, 2024October 25, 2024 by Matt Williams

Neutron Stars May be Shrouded in Extremely Light Particles Called Axions

Image from a computer simulation of the distribution of matter in the universe. Orange regions host galaxies; blue structures are gas and dark matter. Credit: TNG Collaboration

Since the 1960s, astronomers have theorized that the Universe may be filled with a mysterious mass that only interacts with “normal matter” via gravity. This mass, nicknamed Dark Matter (DM), is essential to resolving issues between astronomical observations and General Relativity. In recent years, scientists have considered that DM may be composed of axions, a class of hypothetical elementary particles with low mass within a specific range. First proposed in the 1970s to resolve problems in the Standard Model of particle physics, these particles have emerged as a leading candidate for DM.

In addition to growing evidence that this could be the case, researchers at CERN are developing a new telescope that could help the scientific community look for axions – the CERN Axion Solar Telescope (CAST). According to new research conducted by an international team of physicists, these hypothetical particles may occur in large clouds around neutron stars. These axions could be the long-awaited explanation for Dark Matter that cosmologists have spent decades searching for. What’s more, their research indicates that these axions may not be very difficult to observe from Earth.

October 22, 2024October 22, 2024 by Matt Williams

New Research Reveals Provides Insight into Mysterious Features on Airless Worlds

Artist's rendition of the Dawn mission on approach to the protoplanet Ceres. Credit: NASA/JPL

Between 2011 and 2018, NASA’s Dawn mission conducted extended observations of Ceres and Vesta, the largest bodies in the Main Asteroid Belt. The mission’s purpose was to address questions about the formation of the Solar System since asteroids are leftover material from the process, which began roughly 4.5 billion years ago. Ceres and Vesta were chosen because Ceres is largely composed of ice, while Vesta is largely composed of rock. During the years it orbited these bodies, Dawn revealed several interesting features on their surfaces.

This included mysterious flow features similar to those observed on other airless bodies like Jupiter’s moon Europa. In a recent study, Michael J. Poston, a researcher from the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI), recently collaborated with a team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to attempt to explain the presence of these features. In the paper detailing their findings, they outlined how post-impact conditions could temporarily produce liquid brines that flow along the surface, creating curved gullies and depositing debris fans along the impact craters’ walls.

October 22, 2024October 22, 2024 by David Dickinson

China’s ‘Thousand Sails’ Joins Starlink as the Latest Mega-Satellite Constellation in Orbit

With ‘Thousand Sails,’ China joins the race to fill up Low Earth Orbit with mega-satellite constellations.

It’s getting crowded up there in Low Earth orbit (LEO). By now, flocks of Starlinks have become a familiar sight, and the bane of astrophotographers as the ‘vermin of the skies.’ Now, several new competitors have joined the fray, with more waiting in the wings.

October 21, 2024October 21, 2024 by Evan Gough

Dark Matter Has a Firm Grip on These Galaxies

NGC 1270 is just one member of the Perseus Cluster, a group of thousands of galaxies that lies around 240 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Perseus. This image, taken with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on the Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, captures a dazzling collection of galaxies in the central region of this enormous cluster. Image Credit: International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/ Image Processing: J. Miller & M. Rodriguez (International Gemini Observatory/NSF NOIRLab), T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab) Acknowledgements: PI: Jisu Kang (Seoul National University)

The elliptical galaxy NGC 1270 lies about 240 million light-years away. But it’s not alone. It’s part of the Perseus Cluster (Abell 426), the brightest X-ray object in the sky and one of the most massive objects in the Universe.

NGC 1270 plays a starring role in a new image from the Gemini North telescope. However, the image doesn’t show the dark matter that has a firm grip on the galaxy and the rest of the galaxies in the Perseus Cluster.

October 18, 2024October 18, 2024 by Matt Williams

Check Out This Sneak Peek of the Euclid mission’s Cosmic Atlas

This mosaic made by ESA’s Euclid space telescopes constitutes about 1% of the wide survey that Euclid will capture during six years. Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA/CEA Paris-Saclay/J.-C. Cuillandre, E. Bertin, G. Anselmi

On July 1st, 2023 (Canada Day!), the ESA’s Euclid mission lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. As part of the ESA’s Cosmic Vision Programme, the purpose of this medium-class mission was to observe the “Dark Universe.” This will consist of observing billions of galaxies up to 10 billion light-years away to create the most extensive 3D map of the Universe ever created. This map will allow astronomers and cosmologists to trace the evolution of the cosmos, helping to resolve the mysteries of Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

The first images captured by Euclid were released by the ESA in November 2023 and May 2024, which provided a glimpse at their quality. On October 15th, 2024, the first piece of Euclid‘s great map of the Universe was revealed at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Milan. This 208-gigapixel mosaic contains 260 observations made between March 25th and April 8th, 2024, and provides detailed imagery of millions of stars and galaxies. This mosaic accounts for just 1% of the wide survey that Euclid will cover over its six-year mission and provides a sneak peek at what the final map will look like.