Space and astronomy news
Here’s a hypothetical situation. Imagine we got visited by aliens who came from another star system. Not to conquer us or to share their secrets. Instead, imagine they just came as tourists visiting our Solar System. Now, here’s a question. What should we show them as our best tourist attraction?
Continue reading “Most Outstanding Feature of the Solar System. It’s Not What You Think”
In this week’s breaking space news: CAPSTONE mission was lost and found again, James Webb gets another stunning image, Mars plane can follow Ingenuity, a mystery of first quasars possibly solved, incredibly fast star discovered and more.
Continue reading “30,000,000 km/h Star, Flex from the JWST Team, Mystery of Quasars Solved”
The James Webb Space Telescope will provide unprecedented views and science about our Universe, and the first full-color images and first spectra from the new telescope will be revealed on July 12. But now NASA has done something a little unprecedented, too: they’ve given all of us who are anticipating these images a list of the cosmic targets we’ll be seeing next week.
Continue reading “NASA Reveals What the First Pictures From Webb Will Be”
In his book, Endurance, astronaut Scott Kelly described the arduous task of readjusting to life on Earth after spending a year in space. As part of NASA’s Twins Study, Kelly lived and worked aboard the International Space Station (ISS) while his identical twin (astronaut Mark Kelly) remained on Earth. While the results of this study revealed how prolonged exposure to microgravity could lead to all manner of physiological changes, the long and painful recovery Kelly described in his book painted a much more personal and candid picture.
As it turns out, astronauts who spend extended periods in space may never fully recover. At least, that is the conclusion reached by an international team led by the University of Calgary after they assessed the bone strength of multiple astronauts before and after they went to space. They found that after twelve months of recovery, the astronaut’s bones had not regenerated completely. These findings could have significant implications for proposed future missions, many of which involve long-duration stays in space, on the Moon, and Mars.
Continue reading “Many Astronauts Never Recover all of their Bone Density after Returning to Earth”
At the edge of known space are quasars. They are powerful cosmic engines capable of creating intense beams of light across billions of light years. And they are powered by supermassive black holes (SMBHs). Most galaxies have a SMBH, including our own galaxy, but for quasars to be so powerful their SMBHs must have become very large very quickly. We’re still learning just how they formed. We’ve long thought their formation involved a special set of circumstances, but a new study shows that early quasars could have formed purely from cold dark gas.
Continue reading “Supermassive Black Holes Formed Directly out of Enormous Streams of Cold gas”
A ‘throwaway’ engineering image from the James Webb Space Telescope’s commissioning phase has turned out to be a stunningly deep view of the cosmos. It rivals the deepest of Hubble Deep Field images in revealing previously unseen distant galaxies.
Continue reading “A Test Image From Webb Just Happens to be the Deepest Image Ever Taken of the Universe”
According to the ESA’s Space Debris Office (SDO), there are about 31,630 debris objects in orbit that are regularly tracked by space surveillance networks. However, this only accounts for the larger objects and doesn’t include the (literally) millions of tiny bits of “space junk” that pollute Low Earth Orbit (LEO). According to the SDO, this includes an estimated 36,500 objects greater than 10 cm in diameter (~4 inches), 1 million space debris objects measuring between 1 cm to 10 cm (0.4 to 4 inches), and 130 million space debris objects measuring between 1 mm to 1 cm.
These objects pose a regular threat to the International Space Station (ISS) and will only worsen as satellite “mega-constellations” are deployed to LEO and humanity’s presence there grows. To simulate the dangers these impacts will pose to future missions, a team of Canadian engineers developed an Implosion-Driven Launcher (IDL) that would accelerate magnesium projectiles to hypervelocity – up to 10 kilometers a second (36,000 km/h; 22,370 mph). This gun will effectively simulate the damage micro-objects could inflict on future space stations, spacecraft, and satellites.
Continue reading “Engineers Build a gun That can Fire Projectiles at 10 km/s, Simulating High-Speed Space Debris Impacts”
We look forward to this every year! The Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition showcases and recognizes some of the most stunning views of the night sky and astronomical objects. The shortlisted images from this year’s competition have now been released, and they include awe-inspiring scenes of the Milky Way, colliding galaxies, stellar nurseries, planets, nebula and the always photogenic Moon.
We’re featuring some of our favorites from this year’s competition here. The contest is operated by the Royal Observatory Greenwich, in cooperation with Liberty Specialty Markets and in association with BBC Sky at Night Magazine. In 2022, the competition received over three thousand entries from passionate amateur and dedicated professional photographers, submitted from sixty-seven countries.
Continue reading “Here's the Final Shortlist for Astrophotographer of the Year 2022”
Two Lego designers with a history of space-themed projects have teamed up for a new proposed set: China’s Long March CZ-5 and Tianwen-1 Mission. The set is currently gathering supporters on the LEGO Ideas website. If it gets enough support, LEGO will review it and possibly create it.
Continue reading “A new LEGO Spacecraft to Vote for: China's Long March 5 With the Tianwen-1 That Flew to Mars”
There’s a population of stars in the heart of our galaxy whipping around Sagittarius A* (the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole). Astronomers just found the closest, fastest one (so far). It’s called S4716 and it orbits Sag A* once every four years. That makes it officially the fastest star moving at the heart of our galaxy. To give you some perspective, the Sun moves around the center of the galaxy at a much more leisurely pace once every 230 million years.
Continue reading “One Star Flies Past the Milky Way’s Black Hole at 3% the Speed of Light”