Space and astronomy news
We’re about to reach a milestone that many thought we would never reach. After years of wrangling, cost overruns, threats of cancellation, and lobbying by the science community, the James Webb Space Telescope is only weeks away from its first images.
Continue reading “First Images From JWST are Coming on July 12th”
We’ve been keeping close track of Ingeniuity’s progress here at Universe Today. Following the little helicopter that could hasn’t always been easy – with almost 30 flights logged covering over 7 kilometers and consistently breaking its own record for longest controlled power flight on another planet, Ingenuity has lived up to every expectation so far. But it’s been hard to understand just what it must feel like to fly through the Martian atmosphere – until now.
Continue reading “Watch an Entire Flight by Ingenuity, From Take-off to Landing, Covering 704 Meters”
The idea of a mirror universe is a common trope in science fiction. A world similar to ours where we might find our evil doppelganger or a version of us who actually asked out our high school crush. But the concept of a mirror universe has been often studied in theoretical cosmology, and as a new study shows, it might help us solve problems with the cosmological constant.
Continue reading “Does a “Mirror World of Particles” Explain the Crisis in Cosmology?”
When stars die they’re often not alone, and for the first time astronomers have found a companion to a supernova, lingering long after its sibling destroyed itself.
Continue reading “Hubble Sees a Surviving Companion Star After its Partner Went Supernova”
The planet Mars is calling to us. At least, that is the impression one gets when examining all the planned and proposed missions to the Red Planet in the coming decade. With so many space agencies currently sending missions there to characterize its environment, atmosphere, and geological history, it seems likely that crewed missions are right around the corner. In fact, both NASA and China have made it clear that they intend to send missions to Mars by the early 2030s that will culminate in the creation of surface habitats.
To ensure astronaut health and safety, both in transit and on the surface of Mars, scientists are investigated several means of radiation protection. In a recent study, a team from the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science (BMSIS) studied how various materials could be used to fashion radiation-protective structures. This included materials brought from Earth and those that can be harvested directly from the Martian environment. This is in keeping with the In-Situ-Resource-Utilization (ISRU) process, where local resources are leveraged to meet the needs of the astronaut crews and the mission.
Continue reading “What is the Best Radiation Shielding for the Surface of Mars?”
There’s no question that young solar systems are chaotic places. Cascading collisions defined our young Solar System as rocks, boulders, and planetesimals repeatedly collided. A new study based on chunks of asteroids that crashed into Earth puts a timeline to some of that chaos.
Continue reading “The Early Solar System was Total Mayhem”
June 2022 offers early risers the chance to trace out the naked eye planets, from Mercury to Saturn.
Sometimes, the Universe offers up an illustration of a ready-made science lesson. Just such an alignment occurs this month, as all of the naked eye planets are in order, from innermost Mercury to outermost Saturn.
Continue reading “See All Naked Eye Planets This Month… in Order”
What do two guys from Ohio, the GAIA mission, a worldwide network of ground-based telescopes, machine learning, and citizen scientists all have to do with each other? Thanks to this interesting combo of people and computers, astronomers now have more than 116,000 new variable stars to study. Until now, they knew of about 46,000 of these stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. They had observed maybe 10,000 or so in other galaxies. The discovery gives astronomers even more chances to study variables and understand why they behave the way they do.
Continue reading “Astronomers Find 116,000 New Variable Stars”
“Where are all the Trojans” is a question valid in both the study of ancient history and the study of exoplanets. Trojan bodies, which share orbital paths with other, larger planets, are prevalent in our solar system – most obviously in the Trojan asteroids that follow Jupiter around on its orbital path. However, they seem absent from any star system found with exoplanets. Now, a team of researchers from the SETI Institute and NASA’s Ames Research Center thinks they have found a reason why.
Continue reading “Objects That Share the Same Orbit are Common in the Solar System. But we’ve Never Seen co-Orbital Exoplanets. Why?”
Astronomy is progressing rapidly these days, thanks in part to how advances in one area can contribute to progress in another. For instance, improved optics, instruments, and data processing methods have allowed astronomers to push the boundaries of optical and infrared to gravitational wave (GW) astronomy. Radio astronomy is also advancing considerably thanks to arrays like the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa, which will join with observatories in Australia in the near future to create the Square Kilometer Array (SKA).
In particular, radio astronomers are using next-generation instruments to study phenomena like Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) and neutron stars. Recently, an international team of scientists led by the University of Manchester discovered a strange radio-emitting neutron star with a powerful magnetic field (a “magnetar”) and an extremely slow rotational period of 76 seconds. This discovery could have significant implications for radio astronomy and hints at a possible connection between different types of neutron stars and FRBs.
Continue reading “A Pulsar has Been Found Turning so Slowly Astronomers Didn't Even Think it was Possible: Once Every 76 Seconds”