Space and astronomy news
Astronomy is all about light. Sensing the tiniest amounts of it, filtering it, splitting it into its component wavelengths, and making sense of it, especially from objects a great distance away. The James Webb Space Telescope is especially adept at this, as this new image of supernova remnant (SNR) Cassiopeia A exemplifies so well.
Continue reading “JWST Delivers A Fantastic New Image Of Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A”
In September 2022, an automated sky survey detected what seemed to be a supernova explosion about one billion light-years away. The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) spotted it and gave it the name AT2022tsd. But something was different about this supernova. Supernovae explode and shine brightly for months, while AT2022tsd exploded brightly and then faded within days.
Continue reading “Can a Dead Star Keep Exploding?”
In 2013, amateur astronomer Dana Patchick was looking through images from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer archive and discovered a diffuse, circular object near the constellation of Cassiopeia. He found this apparent nebula was interesting because it was bright in the infrared portion of the spectrum, but virtually invisible in the colors of light visible to our eyes. Dana added this item to the database of the Deep Sky Hunters amateur astronomers group, believing it was a planetary nebula – the quiet remnant of stars in mass similar to the sun. He named it PA 30.
However, professional astronomers who picked it up from there realized that this object is far more than it first seemed. It is, they now believe, the remnant of a lost supernova observed in 1181. And an extremely rare type at that.
Continue reading “An Amateur Astronomer Discovered One-of-a-Kind Supernova Remnant”
The Milky Way can’t hold onto all of its stars. Some of them get ejected into intergalactic space and spend their lives on an uncertain journey. A team of astronomers took a closer look at the most massive of these runaway stars to see what they could find out how they get ejected.
Continue reading “Astronomers Find Dozens of Massive Stars Fleeing the Milky Way”
A supernova explosion is a cataclysmic explosion that marks the violent end of a massive star’s life. During the event, the star releases immense amounts of energy, often outshining the combined light from all the stars in the host galaxy for a very brief period of time. The explosion produces heavy elements and spreads them out among the stars to contribute to the formation of new stars and planets. The closest supernova in recent years occurred in the Large Magellanic Cloud in 1987 (SN1987A) and now, a team of astronomers have searched through mountains of data to see if they can detect gravitational waves from the remnant.
Continue reading “Astronomers are Hoping to Detect Gravitational Waves Coming from Supernova 1987A”
It’s a sobering statement that stars like the Sun, more accurately ALL stars will die eventually, yes even the Sun! Don’t panic though, we still have a good few billion years to go so you will get to the end of this article. The more massive stars die as the dramatic supernovae explosions and when they do, they send a burst of neutrinos across the Universe. Astronomers now think it’s likely there is a background of neutrinos across the cosmos and that one day we will be able to map the historical distribution of supernova explosions, may be even by 2035.
Continue reading “Searching for the Supernova Neutrino Background to the Universe”
Plenty of recent mainstream news articles have touted AI’s ability to assist in the process of scientific discovery. But most of them predicted that it could take years or even decades to see the full effect. Astronomy seems ahead of the curve, though, with the announcement of a new AI system developed by researchers at Northwestern University and elsewhere that can now autonomously detect and classify supernovae.
Continue reading “A Machine Learning Algorithm Finds its First Supernova”
Recently, much attention has been given to massive, active galaxies discovered by the JWST in the early universe. But in contrast to these active galaxies, some galaxies that the JWST has discovered have been unusually quiet with little to no active star formation.
This is surprising because the early universe had a greater density of galaxies, leading to more interactions, and thus, more star formation. So finding galaxies in which star formation has been shut down so early has astronomers puzzling over the question how to kill a galaxy?
Continue reading “Quenched Galaxies in the Early Universe”
While the night sky may appear tranquil (and incredibly beautiful), the cosmos is filled with constant stellar explosions and collisions. Among the rarest of these transient events are what is known as Luminous Fast Blue Optical (LFBOTs), which shine intensely bright in blue light and fade after a few days. These transient events are only detectable by telescopes that continually monitor the sky. Using the venerable Hubble Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers recently observed an LFBOT far between two galaxies, the last place they expected to see one.
Continue reading “Hubble Sees a Mysterious Flash in Between Galaxies”
What happens just before a massive star explodes as a supernova? To figure that out, astronomers need to look at very “young” supernovae across multiple wavelengths of light. That’s what happened when SN 2023ixf occurred in May 2023. It turns out its aging progenitor star blew off a solar mass worth of material just before it died. Now, the big question is: why?
Continue reading “A Star Threw Off a Sun’s Worth of Material. And Then it Exploded!”