Universe Today

November 8, 2022November 8, 2022 by Evan Gough

Earth’s First Known Mass Extinction Event Starved Life of Oxygen

The Blue Marble image of Earth from Apollo 17. Credit: NASA

650 million years ago, Earth was completely or almost completely frozen, according to the Snowball Earth Hypothesis. As the atmosphere changed and Earth warmed up, it heralded the beginning of the Ediacaran Period. The Ediacaran Period marks the first time multicellular life was widespread on the planet. It predates the more well-known Cambrian Period, when more complex life emerged, diversified, and flourished.

Life during the Ediacaran Period faced a mass extinction, and it was Earth’s first one.

What happened?

November 8, 2022November 8, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

Stunning Photos from the November 8, 2022 Total Lunar Eclipse

The colors of totality of the November 8, 2022 Lunar eclipse. Credit and copyright: Eliot Herman.

Did the skies above you cooperate this morning to see the total lunar eclipse? Mine did not, and Fraser reports he was clouded out as well. But thankfully, we can live vicariously through all of the wonderful friends and astrophotographers who have shared their jaw-dropping photos of the blood Moon, Beaver Moon total lunar eclipse. This is the last total lunar eclipse until March 14, 2025.

Our lead image, a composite from University of Arizona Professor Eliot Herman shows a series of views throughout the eclipse. “This Lunar eclipse had soft gradations of color that was quite beautiful,” Herman said on Flickr. “This series of photos begins just before totality and ends just after totality. All images are 15 images stacked captured with a Questar telescope, Baader UV/IR filter, and a Nikon Z7II.”

November 8, 2022November 8, 2022 by Matt Williams

China Launches Mengtian, the Last Major Module to its Space Station

Artist's rendering of the completed Tiangong space station. Credit: Shujianyang/Wikimedia

On the afternoon of Monday, October 31st, 2022 (Halloween!), China launched the Mengtian laboratory cabin module into space, where it will join the Tiangong modular space station. This module, whose name translates to “Dreaming of the Heavens,” is the second laboratory and final addition to Tiangong (“Palace in the Sky”). This successful launch places China one step closer to completing its first long-term space station, roughly one-fifth the mass of the International Space Station (ISS) and comparable in size to Russia’s decommissioned Mir space station.

November 8, 2022November 8, 2022 by Brian Koberlein

Astronomers Spot the Debris From Planets That Formed 10 Billion Years ago

Artist's view of old white dwarfs surrounded by planetary debris. Credit: University of Warwick/Dr Mark Garlick

The fate of the Sun is sealed. It was sealed by gravity in the earliest days of its formation. In several billion years the Sun will swell to a red giant, cast off much of its thin outer layers, then collapse to become a white dwarf. The white dwarfs we see in the nearby galaxy tell us of our Sun’s future. Its core will collapse to about the size of Earth, and then it will gradually cool as it fades into the dark. It’s a tale we’ve long known, but astronomers continue to learn learning interesting details, particularly regarding what might be the fate of the Sun’s planets.

November 8, 2022November 6, 2022 by Scott Alan Johnston

The Smallest Radar Ever Sent to Space Will Probe the Interior of Dimorphos After its Impact From DART

Are miniature probes the future of deep space exploration?

November 7, 2022November 7, 2022 by Laurence Tognetti

Searching for Life on Highly Eccentric Exoplanets

Artist’s rendition of a hypothetical highly eccentric exoplanet (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

When we think about finding life beyond Earth, especially on exoplanets, we immediately want to search for the next Earth, or Earth 2.0. We want an exoplanet that orbits a star firmly in its habitable zone (HZ) with vast oceans of liquid water, and plenty of land to go around. An exoplanet like that most certainly has life, right? But what if we’re looking in the wrong places? What if we find life on exoplanets that don’t possess the aforementioned characteristics, i.e., Earth 2.0?

November 7, 2022November 11, 2022 by Paul M. Sutter

Meet The Solar Ring: A Proposed Spacecraft That Will Have a Panoramic View of the Sun

solar magnetic — Coronal loops in the Sun's atmosphere as viewed in ultraviolet "light." Courtesy UCAR.

The Sun is active, dynamic, and occasionally violent. Unfortunately our view of the Sun is limited to a small handful of orbiting satellites and ground-based observatories. The Solar Ring is new proposal that hopes to radically change that picture by launching a trio of satellites around the Sun to give continuous, 360° panoramic images in real time. The observatory could revolutionize our understanding of our parent star.

November 7, 2022November 7, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

This is Probably the Last Picture we’ll see From InSight on Mars

It’s almost time to say goodbye to another Martian friend. Plenty of missions to the Red Planet have gone silent for the last time, some after many successful years of data collection and some after a brief free-fall as a fireball. We will soon add another Martian explorer to that ever-growing list – InSight might have sent its final image home.

November 7, 2022November 7, 2022 by Evan Gough

The Perfect Tidal Tail Connects These two Galaxies Seen by Hubble

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows two of the galaxies in the galactic triplet Arp 248. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Dark Energy Survey/Department of Energy/Fermilab Cosmic Physics Center/Dark Energy Camera/Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory/NOIRLab/National Science Foundation/AURA Astronomy; J. Dalcanton

Sometimes it’s tempting to imagine a supernatural hand behind the arrangement of celestial bodies. But the Universe is big, huge even, and nature’s flow presents many fascinations.

So it is with the galactic triplet Arp 248, an arrangement of interacting galaxies that’s both visually and scientifically fascinating.

November 7, 2022November 7, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

Want a Sneak Peek From NASA’s Lucy Mission? Here are Some Photos it Took of the Moon During its Flyby

We reported a few weeks ago about an Earth gravity assist flyby for the Lucy mission. Around the same as the spacecraft took a dip closer to Earth than the ISS, it took some fantastic pictures of our nearest neighbor – the Moon. After some processing, those pictures are available for inspection or gawking, as the case may be.