Universe Today

November 30, 2022November 30, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

Tiny Cubesat Will Shine an Infrared ‘Flashlight’ Into the Moon’s Shadowed Craters, Searching for Water Ice

Artist illustration of the Lunar Flashlight’s lasers scanning a shaded lunar crater for the presence of ice. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

A tiny spacecraft is ready to head out for a big job: shining a light on water ice at the Moon’s south pole.

Lunar Flashlight is a cubesat about the size of a briefcase, set to launch on December 1 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, sharing a ride with the Hakuto-R Mission to the Moon.

The tiny 14 kg (30 lb) spacecraft will use near-infrared lasers and an onboard spectrometer to map the permanently shadowed regions near the Moon’s south pole, where there could be reservoirs of water ice.

“If we are going to have humans on the Moon,” said Barbara Cohen, Lunar Flashlight principal investigator, “they will need water for drinking, breathing, and rocket fuel. But it’s much cheaper to live off the land than to bring all that water with you.”

November 30, 2022November 30, 2022 by Evan Gough

It’s Feeding Time For This Baby Star in Orion

This new image of the Orion Nebula produced using previously released data from three telescopes shows two enormous caverns carved out by unseen giant stars that can release up to a million times more light than our Sun. All that radiation breaks apart dust grains there, helping to create the pair of cavities. Much of the remaining dust is swept away when the stars produce wind or when they die explosive deaths as supernovae. Image Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech

Young protostars are wrapped in what could be called a womb of gas and dust. The gas and dust nearest to them form a circumstellar disk as the stars grow. The disk is a reservoir of material that the star accretes as it grows.

But these stars don’t feed in a predictable rhythm. Sometimes, they experience feeding frenzies, periods of time they accrete lots of material from the disk at once. When that happens, they flare in bright bursts, “burping” as they absorb more material.

November 30, 2022November 30, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Mauna Loa is Erupting for the First Time in 40 Years. Here’s What it Looks Like From Space.

Fissure 3 of the current Mauna Loa eruption on the Big island of Hawaii. Courtesy USGS.

A sleeping giant of a volcano woke up this past week on the Big Island of Hawaii. Mauna Loa, which last erupted in the early 1980s, has been rattling the island with earthquakes for weeks. Finally, on November 27th, the mountain opened up. Not only did residents see this eruption, but NASA and NOAA satellites captured an infrared view of it.

November 30, 2022November 30, 2022 by Evan Gough

Should We Build a Nature Reserve on Mars?

There are 8 billion of us now. The UN says when the population peaks around the year 2100, there’ll be 11 billion human souls. Our population growth is colliding with the natural world on a greater scale than ever, and we’re losing between 200 and 2,000 species each year, according to the World Wildlife Federation.

An Engineer from the UK says that one way to mitigate the damage from the clash between humanity and nature is to create more habitat. We could do that by building Terran ecosystem preserves on Mars.

November 30, 2022November 30, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

NASA Releases a Stunning New Supercut of the Artemis I Launch

NASA’s Space Launch System rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft launches on the Artemis I flight test, Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2022. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

NASA just released a new supercut of high-resolution video from the Artemis I launch on November 16, 2022. Much of the footage is from cameras attached to the rocket itself, allowing everyone to ride along from engine ignition to the separation of the Orion capsule as it begins its journey to the Moon.

November 30, 2022November 30, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

Two Great Globular Clusters Seen by Hubble: Pismis 26 and Ruprecht 106

Pismis 26, a globular star cluster located about 23,000 light-years away, as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA and R. Cohen (Rutgers the State University of New Jersey); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America).

If you like shiny things, some of the most gorgeous objects in space are globular clusters, with their bright, densely packed collections of gleaming stars. And if you like globular clusters, you’re in luck: two different Hubble images of globular clusters were featured this week by NASA and ESA.

November 29, 2022November 29, 2022 by Laurence Tognetti

What if we’re truly alone?

At least once, you’ve looked up at the night sky and asked the same longstanding question we’ve all asked at least once, “Are we alone?” With all those points of light out there, we can’t be the only intelligent beings in the universe, right? There must be at least one technological civilization aside from us in the great vastness that we call the cosmos.

November 29, 2022November 29, 2022 by Evan Gough

Astronomers Detect the Faint Glow of Stars in Between Galaxies

Light 'between' the groups of galaxies – the "intra-group light" – however dim, is radiated from stars stripped from their home galaxy. Image Credit: MARTÍNEZ-LOMBILLA ET AL./UNSW SYDNEY

Not all stars are members of galaxies. Some stars exist in the space between galaxies, though they didn’t form there. They’re called intra-group stars, and astronomers study them by observing their light, called intra-group light (IGL.)

They’re challenging to observe because their light is extremely faint and overpowered by the light of nearby galaxies.

November 29, 2022December 3, 2022 by Matt Williams

Astronomers Directly Image Debris Disk and find a Jupiter-Sized Planet Orbiting a Sunlike Star

Astronomers with the SHINE collabortion observed a debris disk containing a Super-Jupiter around a young star. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); M. Weiss (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

According to the most widely-accepted theory, planetary systems form from large clouds of dust and gas that form disks around young stars. Over time, these disks accrete to create planets of varying size, composition, and distance from their parent star. In the past few decades, observations in the mid- and far-infrared wavelengths have led to the discovery of debris disks around young stars (less than 100 million years old). This has allowed astronomers to study planetary systems in their early history, providing new insight into how systems form and evolve.

This includes the SpHere INfrared survey for Exoplanets (SHINE) consortium, an international team of astronomers dedicated to studying star systems in formation. Using the ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), the SHINE collaboration recently directly imaged and characterized the debris disk of a nearby star (HD 114082) in visible and infrared wavelengths. Combined with data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Space Satellite (TESS), they were able to detect a gas giant many times the size of Jupiter (a “Super-Jupiter”) embedded within the disk.

November 29, 2022December 5, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

BlueWalker 3 is a Cellphone Tower in Space and One of the Brightest Objects Ever Launched. Astronomers Aren’t Happy.

It seems our nighttime skies are hosting another new communications network. In recent years, we’ve seen Starlink trains of satellites moving against the backdrop of stars, and more OneWeb satellites will soon be heading to orbit. Now, it’s BlueWalker 3, a prototype test satellite for a new communications constellation aimed at cell phones. Think of it as the first of many “cell towers in space” providing communications access for people around the globe.