In this series we are exploring the weird and wonderful world of astronomy jargon! Get your friends together to talk about today’s topic: the Local Group!
Continue reading “Astronomy Jargon 101: Local Group”Astronomy Jargon 101: Local Group
There are Deposits of ice at Mercury's Poles too
Although the Arecibo radio telescope is no more, it continues to deliver scientific discoveries. There is a wealth of Arecibo data astronomers continue to mine for new discoveries, and one of them is thanks to an astronomical technique known as planetary radar.
Continue reading “There are Deposits of ice at Mercury's Poles too”Now That is a Big Rocket. Space Launch System Rolls out to the Launch pad for a Series of Tests
Under the full Moon, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket rolled out to the launchpad for the first time. The journey began at the iconic Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center, with the gigantic stack of the mega rocket arriving at Launch Pad 39B in preparation for a series of final checkouts before its Artemis I test flight.
The four-mile trip for SLS and the Orion spacecraft, on top of the crawler-transporter took 10 hours and 28 minutes, and the 3.5-million-pound rocket and spacecraft arrived at the pad at 4:15 a.m. on March 18.
Continue reading “Now That is a Big Rocket. Space Launch System Rolls out to the Launch pad for a Series of Tests”NASA Releases Details on how Starship Will be Part of its Return to the Moon
The path back to the moon is long and fraught with danger, both in the real, physical sense and also in the contractual, legal sense. NASA, the agency sponsoring the largest government-backed lunar program, Artemis, has already been feeling the pain on the contractual end. Legal battles have delayed the development of a critical component of the Artemis program – the Human Landing System (HLS). But now, the ball has started rolling again, and a NASA manager recently reported the progress and future vision of this vital part of the mission to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers at a conference.
Continue reading “NASA Releases Details on how Starship Will be Part of its Return to the Moon”Astronomy Jargon 101: Magellanic Clouds
In this series we are exploring the weird and wonderful world of astronomy jargon! You’ll only be visible in the southern hemisphere after today’s topic: the Magellanic Clouds!
Continue reading “Astronomy Jargon 101: Magellanic Clouds”A Pulsar is Blasting out Jets of Matter and Antimatter
Why is there so much antimatter in the Universe? Ordinary matter is far more plentiful than antimatter, but scientists keep detecting more and more antimatter in the form of positrons. More positrons reach Earth than standard models predict. Where do they come from?
Scientists think pulsars are one source, and a new study strengthens that idea.
Continue reading “A Pulsar is Blasting out Jets of Matter and Antimatter”ESA’s Gaia Just Took a Picture of L2 Neighbor JWST
Oh, hello there new neighbor! In February, the Gaia spacecraft took a picture of its new closest companion in space at the second Lagrangian point, the James Webb Space Telescope.
Gaia is an optical telescope that is mapping out our galaxy by surveying the motions of more than a thousand million stars. Astronomers for the mission realized that once JWST reached L2, it would be in Gaia’s field of view. It spied JWST when the two spacecraft were a million km apart.
Continue reading “ESA’s Gaia Just Took a Picture of L2 Neighbor JWST”Astronomy Jargon 101: Neutron Star
In this series we are exploring the weird and wonderful world of astronomy jargon! You’ll feel a little dense after reading about today’s topic: neutron stars!
Continue reading “Astronomy Jargon 101: Neutron Star”Webb has Now Taken the Sharpest Image the Laws of Physics Allow
Engineers and scientists for the James Webb Space Telescope have completed two more steps in the telescope’s primary mirror alignment process, and in a briefing today, officials said JWST’s optical performance appears to be better than even the most optimistic predictions.
The team released a new engineering image, showing the star 2MASS J17554042+6551277 in crisp clarity. This image demonstrates that all 18 mirror segments have been precisely aligned to act as one giant, high-precision 6.5-meter (21.3-foot) primary telescope mirror.
Continue reading “Webb has Now Taken the Sharpest Image the Laws of Physics Allow”A new way to Confirm Hawking's Idea That Black Holes Give off Radiation
Nothing can escape a black hole. General relativity is very clear on this point. Cross a black hole’s event horizon, and you are forever lost to the universe. Except that’s not entirely true. It’s true according to Einstein’s theory, but general relativity is a classical model. It doesn’t take into account the quantum aspects of nature. For that, you’d need a quantum theory of gravity, which we don’t have. But we do have some ideas about some of the effects of quantum gravity, and one of the most interesting is Hawking radiation.
Continue reading “A new way to Confirm Hawking's Idea That Black Holes Give off Radiation”