Universe Today

October 5, 2023October 5, 2023 by David Dickinson

It’s Time to Start Worrying About Space Junk Around the Moon, Too

Researchers look to track and mitigate the growing number of space junk objects around the Moon.

It’s getting crowded up there. An increase in military, commercial and scientific launches, coupled with a lower cost for rideshare cubesat launches, means lots more space junk to deal with in coming years. And we’re not just talking about low Earth orbit; the Moon and cis-lunar (near lunar space) is about to become busy as well.

October 4, 2023October 4, 2023 by Evan Gough

Watch OSIRIS-REx Release its Sample Capsule

This is the OSIRIS-Rex sample return capsule in the Great Salt Lake Desert. It's charred and blackened from its plunge through Earth's atmosphere. Image Credit: NASA/Keegan Barber

Most of the spacecraft we send out into the Solar System are never meant to return. Time, space, and entropy overtake them, or else they’re purposely sent crashing to their doom at the end of their missions. But not OSIRIS-REx. Its mission was only a success when it returned to Earth with its rare cargo.

October 4, 2023October 4, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Hundreds of Free-Floating Planets Found in the Orion Nebula

This image shows the full survey of the inner Orion Nebula and Trapezium Cluster made using the NIRCam instrument on the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. This is the long-wavelength colour composite, which focuses on the gas, dust, and molecules in the region with unprecedented sensitivity in the thermal infrared. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA / Science leads and image processing: M. McCaughrean, S. Pearson.

It appears that rogue planets – free floating worlds that aren’t gravitationally bound to a parent star – might be more common than we thought. New data from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed 540 (yes, that’s right) planetary-mass objects in the Orion Nebula and Trapezium Cluster.

If confirmed, this would be by far the largest sample of rogue planets ever discovered.

October 4, 2023October 4, 2023 by Evan Gough

Seeing the Web Connecting Galaxies Across the Universe

New research has imaged the Cosmic Web of cold dark gas that interconnects the Universe's galaxies. Image Credit: Martin et al. 2023.

One hundred years ago, we didn’t know there was anything outside of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. Now we know that our puny planet Earth, and everything else, is part of a vast structure called the Cosmic Web. Its scale is difficult to comprehend in any concrete way, and the system’s complexity and magnitude brings our most powerful supercomputers to their knees.

Astronomers have known about the Cosmic Web for some time, as they’ve caught glimpses of it. But a new instrument has given us our most complete view of it yet.

October 4, 2023October 4, 2023 by Brian Koberlein

Old Stars Don't Have Hot Jupiters

Hot Jupiters may not last long near Sun-like stars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

As we began to discover hundreds, then thousands of exoplanets, we found that there were two types of worlds unlike anything in our solar system. The first are super-Earths. These worlds straddle the line between large rocky worlds like Earth and small gas planets like Neptune. The second are hot Jupiters. Large gas giants that orbit their star in a matter of days. While there may be a super-Earth lurking at the outer edge of our solar system, we know our Sun has no hot Jupiters. This is a little surprising since close-orbiting gas giants seem to be fairly common. But a new study could explain why our solar system has no planet Vulcan.

October 3, 2023October 3, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Incredible New Images of the Orion Nebula From JWST

The Orion Nebula is one of the brightest star-forming regions in the sky, easily visible in a small telescope. But you’ve never seen anything like these new images from JWST. Researchers have created enormous mosaics of the region in both short and long-wavelength channels. An interactive interface from ESA allows you to zoom in and out of the image and switch between the views. You can see details in the stellar discs and outflows in the short-wavelength version, while the long-wavelength version reveals the network of dust and organic compounds.

The new images also reveal some mind-boggling enigmas.

October 3, 2023October 3, 2023 by Matt Williams

Perseverance Watches a Dust Devil Whirl Past

NASA’s Perseverance rover captured this Martian dust devil moving east to west at a clip of about 12 mph (19 kph) along “Thorofare Ridge” on Aug. 30. The video, which was sped up 20 times, is composed of 21 frames taken four seconds apart. It was enhanced in order to show maximal detail. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

On August 30th, 2023, on the 899th Martian day (sol 899) of its mission, NASA’s Perseverance rover spotted a dust devil while exploring the Jezero Crater. The images taken by one of the rover’s Navigation Cameras (NavCams) were used to make a video (shown below), which is composed of 21 frames taken four seconds apart and sped up 20 times. Similar to small, short-lived whirlwinds on Earth, these vertical columns of wind form when pockets of hot air near the surface rise quickly through cooler air above it. By studying them, scientists hope to learn more about Mars’ atmosphere and improve their weather models.

October 3, 2023October 4, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

We Don't Know Enough About the Biomedical Challenges of Deep Space Exploration

Artist's impression of astronauts on the lunar surface, as part of the Artemis Program. Credit: NASA

Although humans have flown to space for decades, the missions have primarily been in low-Earth orbit, with just a handful of journeys to the Moon. Future missions with the upcoming Artemis program aim to have humans living and working on the Moon, with the hopes of one day sending humans to Mars.

However, the environments of the Moon and deep space present additional health challenges to astronauts over low-Earth orbit (LEO), such as higher radiation, long-term exposure to reduced gravity and additional acceleration and deceleration forces. A new paper looks at the future of biomedicine in space, with a sobering takeaway: We currently don’t know enough about the biomedical challenges of exploring deep space to have an adequate plan to ensure astronaut health and safety for the Artemis program.

October 3, 2023October 3, 2023 by Evan Gough

Astronomers Have Been Watching a Supernova’s Debris Cloud Expand for Decades with Hubble

This is a Hubble image of a very small region of the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant. The image shows a small part of the leading edge of the expanding bubble. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Ravi Sankrit (STScI)

Twenty thousand years ago, a star in the constellation Cygnus went supernova. Like all supernovae, the explosion released a staggering amount of energy. The explosion sent a powerful shockwave into the surrounding space at half a million miles per hour, and it shows no signs of slowing down.

For twenty years, the Hubble Space Telescope has been watching some of the action.

October 3, 2023October 3, 2023 by Brian Koberlein

Astronomers Watched a Massive Star Just… Disappear. Now JWST Might Have Some Answers

This Illustration shows a failed supernova turning directly into a black hole without an explosion. Credit: NASA/ESA/P. Jeffries (STScI)

In 2009 a giant star 25 times more massive than the Sun simply…vanished. Okay, it wasn’t quite that simple. It underwent a period of brightening, increasing in luminosity to a million Suns, just as if it was ready to explode into a supernova. But then it faded rather than exploding. And when astronomers tried to see the star, using the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT), Hubble, and the Spitzer space telescope, they couldn’t see anything.

The star, known as N6946-BH1, is now considered a failed supernova. The BH1 in its name is due to the fact that astronomers think the star collapsed to become a black hole rather than triggering a supernova. But that has been conjecture. All we’ve known for sure is that it brightened for a time then grew too dim for our telescopes to observe. But that has changed, thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).