Universe Today

July 25, 2022July 25, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

A Satellite had to Dodge Space Junk as it was Raising its Orbit to Avoid Solar Activity

The phrase “when it rains, it pours” is commonly used in the US to denote that bad things usually happen simultaneously. And it doesn’t only have to apply to things that happen where it can physically rain. Recently an ESA satellite had a series of bad things happen that could potentially have happened to it, but quick action from the team responsible for the satellite avoided two what could have been catastrophic events.

July 25, 2022July 25, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

The World’s Most Sensitive Dark Matter Detector has Come Online

Individual contributors have become less and less prominent in scientific fields as the discipline itself has matured. Some individuals still hold the public spotlight for their discoveries, such as Peter Higgs with the Higgs boson, which several other physicists also theorized around the same time he did. However, the actual data that eventually gave Dr. Higgs and François Englert their Nobel prize were collected by the Large Hadron Collider, arguably one of the largest technical projects that took thousands of scientists decades to design, build, and test.

July 25, 2022July 25, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

Astronomers Have Digitized 94,000 Photographic Plates of the Night sky, Going Back 129 Years

Since the early days of the internet, and even computers more generally, there has been a push to collect all of the world’s information, built up over thousands of years, into a digital form so it can at least theoretically latest indefinitely. It also makes that information much more accessible to people interested in it. That was the motto of the original Google search engine, and specialists in various historical fields have been making slow but steady progress in doing just that over the past few decades. Now astronomy has gained one of its largest hauls of historical data as the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg has digitized 40,000 of its historical astronomical plates, along with 54,090 plates from other sources.

July 25, 2022July 25, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

A Look Inside One of Perseverance’s Core Holes

A look inside the drill hole from the Perseverance rover's core sample drill. This image is a "focus merge" combination of available non-partial images. NASA/JPL-Caltech/Kevin M. Gill.

Here’s one of the best views you’ll ever see of the insides of a rock on Mars. The hole was made by the Perseverance rover’s drill, a rotary percussive drill designed to extract rock core samples from the surface of Mars. After the sample was taken, Perseverance rover acquired this image using its SHERLOC WATSON camera to take a close-up view of the hole.

This is such a clear image because image editing expert Kevin Gill used a technique called focus merge to get the best view possible. A “focus merge” uses a series of images taken at different focuses, stacks them up and uses whichever pixels are the sharpest. You can see a larger version on Kevin’s Flickr page.

July 24, 2022July 24, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Hubble Sees a Mirror Image of the Same Galaxy Thanks to Gravitational Lensing

Gravitational lensing and SGAS J143845+145407

It’s been an amazing couple of weeks for fans of gravitational lensing. JWST grabbed the headlines with a spectacular infrared view of lensing in the SMACS 0723 image, and that had everybody talking. Yet, seeing gravitationally lensed objects is not new. Some can be seen from the ground, and of course, Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has been cranking out views of gravitational lensing for years.

Just a few days ago, HST released another one. It’s a striking view of a distant galaxy called SGAS J143845+145407. It’s the centerpiece of the HST view and appears twice in a mirror image of itself. The galaxy appears a third time, as a very smeared apparition that makes a “bridge” between the other two images.

July 24, 2022July 24, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

The Deepest Known Canyon in the Solar System, Seen From Space

Solar system worlds beyond Earth have amazing surface features. Thanks to planetary science missions, we see images of canyons, craters, and cliffs across a variety of worlds. Someday, those places will give mountain climbers and hikers new challenges. In particular, Mars will be a favored destination. Future hikers and mountain climbers will be spoiled for choice, even if they must wear space suits to get their thrill on.

For example, there’s the Valles Marineris canyon region. It’s the largest known such feature in the solar system, many times larger than the Grand Canyon here on Earth. The European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter just returned breathtaking images of this rift canyon.

July 23, 2022July 24, 2022 by Laurence Tognetti

Solar System Tours: Plumes of Enceladus

“We’re coming up on the plumes!” The co-pilot announced over the intercom.

The other six passengers and I took our positions along the viewing cupola at the belly of the “Tour Bus”, and each grabbed on to the hand and foot restraints to keep ourselves in place in the weightlessness. We were traveling about 400 km (250 miles) above the south pole of Enceladus looking down at the highly reflective surface that was so bright it took about a minute for our eyes to adjust. We all remained silent, and my heart was pounding in anticipation. The Tour Bus silently coasted for a few more minutes as we took in the breathtaking view of Saturn’s sixth-largest moon.

July 23, 2022July 23, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

A Mission to Reach the Solar Gravitational Lens in 30 Years

NASA’s Institute for Advanced Concepts is famous for supporting outlandish ideas in the astronomy and space exploration fields. Since being re-established in 2011, the institute has supported a wide variety of projects as part of its three-phase program. However, so far, only three projects have gone on to receive Phase III funding. And one of those just released a white paper describing a mission to get a telescope that could effectively see biosignatures on nearby exoplanets by utilizing the gravitational lens of our own Sun.

July 23, 2022July 23, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

Researchers Create a Plasma Bubble With Lasers That Could Provide Propulsion or an Artificial Magnetosphere

Lasers are useful for a lot of things. They made CDs work (when they were still a thing). They also provide hours of entertainment for cats (and their humans). But they can also create magnetic conditions similar to the surface of the Sun in a lab, according to new research by scientists at Osaka University. And that might help a wide range of other scientific disciplines, ranging from solar astronomy to fusion.

July 23, 2022July 23, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

An Astronaut Controlled a Rover as it Collected Samples on Mt Etna. In the Future, it’ll be on the Moon

Lunar exploration has been gaining more and more traction from various sources recently. Every step forward is another towards potentially having a permanent human presence on another solar system body. ESA took another step recently with the completion of its Analog-1 robotics test, which took place successfully on the slopes of Mt Etna earlier this month.