Universe Today

April 5, 2022April 5, 2022 by Evan Gough

Hubble Has Been Watching This Planet Form for 13 Years

Researchers were able to directly image newly forming exoplanet AB Aurigae b over a 13-year span using Hubble’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and its Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrograph (NICMOS). In the top right, Hubble’s NICMOS image captured in 2007 shows AB Aurigae b in a due south position compared to its host star, which is covered by the instrument’s coronagraph. The image captured in 2021 by STIS shows the protoplanet has moved in a counterclockwise motion over time. Credits: Science: NASA, ESA, Thayne Currie (Subaru Telescope, Eureka Scientific Inc.); Image Processing: Thayne Currie (Subaru Telescope, Eureka Scientific Inc.), Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Hubble’s most remarkable feature might be its longevity. The Hubble has been operating for almost 32 years and has fed us a consistent diet of science—and eye candy—during that time. For 13 of its 32 years, it’s been checking in on a protoplanet forming in a young solar system about 530 light-years away.

Planet formation is always a messy process. But in this case, the planet’s formation is an “intense and violent process,” according to the authors of a new study.

April 5, 2022April 5, 2022 by Shawn DiCenza

Lasers Recreate the Conditions Inside Galaxy Clusters

Galaxies don’t exist in a vacuum. Ok, maybe they do (mostly, since even interstellar space has some matter in it). But galaxies aren’t normally solitary objects. Multiple galaxies interacting gravitationally can form clusters. These clusters can interact with each other, forming superclusters. Our own galaxy is part of a group of galaxies called the Local Group. This Local Group is part of the Virgo Supercluster, which is in turn a part of a group of superclusters called the Laniakea Supercluster.

Mixed in with all of these galaxies is a lot of heat, with extremely high temperatures comparable to the core of our Sun, around 10 million Kelvin (27 million degrees Fahrenheit). This temperature is so hot that hydrogen atoms cannot exist, and instead of gas a plasma forms of protons and electrons. This is a problem for physicists though, who say it shouldn’t be that hot.

As Gianluca Gregori, a professor of physics at University of Oxford and one author of a new paper detailing an experiment to recreate the conditions inside a galaxy cluster, puts it: “The reason why the gas inside the galaxy cluster should have cooled down is simply due to the fact that the cluster has existed for a very long time (for a time which is comparable to the age of the Universe). So, if we assume thermal conduction works in the normal way, we would have expected the initial hot core to have dissipated its heat by now. But observations shows it has not.”

April 4, 2022April 4, 2022 by Scott Alan Johnston

According to Perseverance, Mars is Quiet… too Quiet

If you want to hear what Mars has to say, you’re going to have to listen closely. Very closely.

April 4, 2022April 4, 2022 by Evan Gough

Primordial Helium, Left Over From the Big Bang, is Leaking Out of the Earth

The center of Lagoon Nebula, captured by the Hubble Telescope. Nebulae are the primary sources of helium-3, and the amount of He-3 leaking from the Earth’s core suggests the planet formed inside the solar nebula, according to a new study in the AGU journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems. Credit: NASA, ESA

Something ancient and primordial lurks in Earth’s core. Helium 3 (³He) was created in the first minutes after the Big Bang, and some of it found its way through time and space to take up residence in Earth’s deepest regions. How do we know this?

Scientists can measure it as it slowly escapes.

April 4, 2022April 4, 2022 by Matt Williams

The Milky Way has an Inner Ring, Just Outside the Core

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals a spiral galaxy named Messier 95 (also known as M95 or NGC 3351). Located about 35 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (The Lion), this swirling spiral was discovered by astronomer Pierre Méchain in 1781, and catalogued by French astronomer Charles Messier just four days later. Messier was primarily a comet hunter, and was often left frustrated by objects in the sky that resembled comets but turned out not to be. To help other astronomers avoid confusing these objects in the future, he created his famous catalogue of Messier objects. Most definitely not a comet, Messier 95 is actually a barred spiral galaxy. The galaxy has a bar cutting through its centre, surrounded by an inner ring currently forming new stars. Also our own Milky Way is a barred spiral. As well as hosting this stellar nursery, Messier 95 is a known host of the dramatic and explosive final stages in the lives of massive stars: supernovae. In March 2016 a spectacular supernova named SN 2012aw was observed in the outer regions of one of Messier 95’s spiral arms. Once the light from the supernova had faded, astronomers were able to compare observations of the region before and after the explosion to find out which star had “disappeared” — the progenitor star. In this case, the star was an especially huge red supergiant up to 26 times more massive than the Sun.

In the past century, astronomers have learned a great deal about the cosmos and our place in it. From discovering that the Universe is in a constant state of expansion to the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and the Big Bang cosmological model, our perception of the cosmos has expanded immensely. And yet, many of the most profound astronomical discoveries still occur within our cosmic backyard – the Milky Way Galaxy.

Compared to other galaxies, which astronomers can resolve with relative ease, the structure and size of the Milky Way have been the subject of ongoing discovery. The most recent comes from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), where scientists have found a previously undiscovered inner ring of metal-rich stars just outside the Galactic Bar. The existence of this ring has revealed new insights into star formation in this region of the galaxy during its early history.

April 3, 2022April 3, 2022 by Matt Williams

The ExoMars Rover is Ready, now it Just Needs a new Ride to Mars

An artist's illustration of the ExoMars/Rosalind Franklin rover on Mars. Image Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

When it arrives on Mars, the ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover will join a growing fleet of robotic rovers, landers, and orbiters dedicated to searching for life on Mars. As part of the Exomars program, this mission was a collaborative effort between the ESA and the Russian State Space Corporation (Roscosmos). Whereas the ESA would provide the rover, Roscosmos was to provide the launch services and the Kazachok lander that would deliver Rosalind Franklin to the surface.

After many years of development, testing, and some delays, the Rosalind Franklin rover passed its System Qualification and Flight Acceptance Review in March. The Review Board confirmed that the rover was ready to be shipped to the launch site at Baikonur Cosmodrome and would make the launch window opening on September 20th, 2022. Unfortunately, due to the suspension of cooperation with Roscosmos, the ESA’s rover finds itself stranded on Earth for the time being.

April 2, 2022April 5, 2022 by Matt Williams

NASA Will be Testing SLS Over the Weekend

The Space Launch System (SLS) has just one more hurdle to clear before this summer’s historic launch. This is known as the Wet Dress Rehearsal, where the fully-stacked SLS and Orion spacecraft will conduct a series of operations at the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This test follows the arrival of the SLS to Launch Complex 39B after making its big rollout on March 17th from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VLB).

The Wet Dress Rehearsal will run from Friday, April 1st, through Sunday, April 3rd, and will see the Artemis I launch team load propellant into the rocket’s tanks, conduct a full launch countdown, demonstrate the ability to recycle the countdown clock, and also drain propellants to give them an opportunity to practice the timelines and procedures they will use for launch. The weekend-long event will be live-streamed via the Kennedy Newsroom YouTube channel.

April 1, 2022April 1, 2022 by Evan Gough

Stunning Image of ISS Taken From the Ground Shows two Spacewalking Astronauts

During the spacewalk of the two astronauts Raja Chari and Matthias Maurer the International Space Station appeared shortly after sunset in the bright evening sky over Germany. Image Credit: Sebastian Voltmer

In our age, we’ve grown accustomed to pictures of astronauts inside the International Space Station, as they float in zero-G and tend their science experiments. We’re even getting used to images of spacewalking astronauts. But this is something new.

An image of two astronauts on a spacewalk, taken from the ground.

April 1, 2022April 1, 2022 by Evan Gough

Pluto’s Surface was Shaped by Ice Volcanoes

New Horizons mission scientists have determined that cryovolcanic activity most likely created unique structures on Pluto not yet seen anywhere else in the solar system. Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Isaac Herrera/Kelsi Singer

For all of Earth’s geological diversity and its long history, the planet has never had ice volcanoes. But Pluto has. And that cryovolcanism has shaped some of the ice dwarf’s surface features.

The resulting structures are unique in the Solar System.

March 31, 2022April 2, 2022 by Matt Williams

New Simulation Recreates an Early Time in the Universe That Still Hasn't Been Seen Directly

The fields of astronomy and astrophysics are poised for a revolution in the coming years. Thanks to next-generation observatories like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scientists will finally be able to witness the formation of the first stars and galaxies in the Universe. In effect, they will be able to pierce the veil of the Cosmic Dark Ages, which lasted from roughly 370,000 years to 1 billion years after the Big Bang.

During this period, the Universe was filled with clouds of neutral hydrogen and decoupled photons that were not visible to astronomers. In anticipation of what astronomers will see, researchers from the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPIA) created a new simulation suite called Thesan that simulates the earliest period of galaxy formation.