In astronomy, comets and asteroids are defined very differently. Comets have a “nucleus,” usually made of ice and dust, and a tail when they get near the sun, which is the nucleus material shedding off from the comet itself. Asteroids, on the other hand, are small balls of rock orbiting the sun. Occasionally though, some objects meet the criteria to be both an asteroid and a comet – and a team from the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) think they have found a new one.
Continue reading “This Object is Both an Asteroid and a Comet”Perseverance Sees Evidence of Flash Floods in Jezero Crater
Nearly eight months into the Perseverance rover’s mission on Mars, researchers have confirmed that Jezero crater is (as was believed) an ancient lakebed, but more significantly, that it once experienced powerful flash floods that pushed boulders from tens of miles upstream into the crater basin.
Continue reading “Perseverance Sees Evidence of Flash Floods in Jezero Crater”Nancy Grace Roman Just Passed a Critical Design Review
By 2027, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope – or Roman Space Telescope (RST), for short – will take to space and build on the legacy of the venerable Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Combing a large primary mirror, a camera as sensitive as its predecessors, and next-generation surveying capabilities, Roman will have the power of “One-Hundred Hubbles.” It’s little wonder then why the telescope is named after Dr. Roman (1925 – 2018), NASA’s first Chief Astronomer and the “Mother of Hubble.”
As part of its journey towards realization, this next-generation space telescope recently passed a crucial milestone. This would be the all-important Mission Critical Design Review (CDR), signaling that all design and developmental engineering work is complete. With this milestone reached, the next-generation space telescope is now ready to move from the conceptual stage into the fabrication and assembly phase.
Continue reading “Nancy Grace Roman Just Passed a Critical Design Review”An Exoplanet Reaches 2400 C in One Hemisphere. Does it Really Rain Iron?
WASP-76b is an ultra-hot Jupiter about 640 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Pisces. A few years ago it gained notoriety for being so hot that iron falls as rain. It’s tidally locked to its star, and the planet’s star-facing hemisphere can reach temperatures as high as 2400 Celsius, well above iron’s 1538 C melting point.
Scientists have been studying the planet since its discovery in 2013, and new evidence suggests that it’s even hotter than thought. But, almost disappointingly, there might be no iron rain after all.
Continue reading “An Exoplanet Reaches 2400 C in One Hemisphere. Does it Really Rain Iron?”Are the Burned-Out Remnants of the First Stars all Around us?
The first stars to appear in the universe lived fast and died young. Today, none of them likely remain. But their remnants, the black holes and neutron stars, might still wander around the cosmos. Unfortunately, they’re extremely difficult to detect unless they merge, and according to new research the only way to see them would be to conduct an unprecedented survey of the local volume of the universe.
Continue reading “Are the Burned-Out Remnants of the First Stars all Around us?”Russian Actor and Filmmaker are On the Space Station to Shoot Scenes for a Film
Earlier this week, a Soyuz spacecraft launched to the International Space Station with three people on board. But only one of them was a cosmonaut. The other two crew members were Russian actress Yulia Peresild and film producer Klim Shipenko. They will be on the ISS for 12 days to film scenes for an upcoming movie, called “Challenge.”
NASA says the film crew is there under a commercial agreement between Roscosmos and Moscow-based media entities, adding that “the launch will mark the expansion of commercial space opportunities to include feature filmmaking.”
Continue reading “Russian Actor and Filmmaker are On the Space Station to Shoot Scenes for a Film”It’s Official, William Shatner Will be Flying to Space With Blue Origin
Star Trek meets star reality as William Shatner, the iconic 90-year-old actor, will fly on the next Blue Origins suborbital launch on October 12th.
Continue reading “It’s Official, William Shatner Will be Flying to Space With Blue Origin”One Star Could Answer Many Unsolved Questions About Black Holes
A supermassive black hole (SMBH) likely resides at the center of the Milky Way, and in the centers of other galaxies like it. It’s never been seen though. It was discovered by watching a cluster of stars near the galactic center, called S stars.
S stars’ motions indicated the presence of a massive object in the Milky Way’s center and the scientific community mostly agreed that it must be an SMBH. It’s named Sagittarius A*.
But some scientists wonder if it really is a black hole. And one of the S stars could answer that question and a few others about black holes.
Continue reading “One Star Could Answer Many Unsolved Questions About Black Holes”Astronomers Have a new way to Measure the Mass of Supermassive Black Holes
Even the most supermassive of the supermassive black holes aren’t very large, making it extremely difficult to measure their sizes. However, astronomers have recently developed a new technique that can estimate the mass of a black hole based on the movement of hot gas around them – even when the black hole itself it smaller than a single pixel.
Continue reading “Astronomers Have a new way to Measure the Mass of Supermassive Black Holes”Astronomers Might use Pulsars to First Detect Merging Supermassive Black Holes
Astronomers have been using gravitational waves to detect merging black holes for years now, but may have to rely on pulsars – rapidly spinning neutron stars – to observe the mergers of supermassive black holes.
Continue reading “Astronomers Might use Pulsars to First Detect Merging Supermassive Black Holes”