Universe Today

February 5, 2021February 5, 2021 by Evan Gough

Astronomers Can Predict When a Galaxy’s Star Formation Ends Based on the Shape and Size of its Disk

An ensemble of twenty-five disk galaxies. The view on the left shows light emitted in the H-alpha line from interstellar gas as a result of ongoing star-formation, while the panels on the right shows the optical light emitted by a mix of young (bluer) and old (redder) stars. Each galaxy can be seen rotated edge-on below its face-on view. Image Credit: TNG Collaboration

A galaxy’s main business is star formation. And when they’re young, like youth everywhere, they keep themselves busy with it. But galaxies age, evolve, and experience a slow-down in their rate of star formation. Eventually, galaxies cease forming new stars altogether, and astronomers call that quenching. They’ve been studying quenching for decades, yet much about it remains a mystery.

A new study based on the IllustrisTNG simulations has found a link between a galaxy’s quenching and its stellar size.

February 5, 2021February 5, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

A New Radar Instrument Will Try To Fill the Void Left By Arecibo

Observational astronomy is dependent on its data, and therefore also dependent on the instruments that collect that data. So when one of those instruments fails it is a blow to the profession as a whole. The collapse of the Arecibo Telescope last year after it was damaged by Hurricane Maria in 2017 permanently deprived the radio astronomy world of one of its primary observational tools. Now a team at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) hopes to upgrade an existing telescope at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia to replace the failed Puerto Rican one and provide even more precise images of near Earth objects in the radio spectrum.

February 4, 2021February 5, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

What Looked Like Phosphine On Venus Might Actually Just Be Sulfur Dioxide

There’s nothing like a good old fashioned science fight. When the discovery being challenged is one of the most public and intriguing of the last year, it’s bound to be even more interesting. A team of scientists, led by Andrew Lincowski and Victoria Meadows at the University of Washington (UW), and involving members from a variety of NASA labs and other universities, has challenged the discovery of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus that was first announced last year. Their explanation is much simpler: it was most likely sulfur dioxide, one of the most abundant materials already known to be in Venus’ atmosphere.

February 4, 2021February 10, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

Dark Energy Survey Finds Hundreds of New Gravitational Lenses

It’s relatively rare for a magical object from fantasy stories to have a analog in real life. A truly functional crystal ball (or palantir) would be useful for everything from military operations to checking up on grandma. While nothing exists to be able to observe the mundanities of everyday life, there is something equivalent for extraordinarily far away galaxies: gravitational lenses. Now a team led by Xiaosheng Huang from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and several universities around the world have published a list of more than 1200 new gravitational lensing candidates.

February 4, 2021February 4, 2021 by Matt Williams

SLS Will be Tested Again in About 3 Weeks

The core stage for the first flight of NASA’s Space Launch System rocket is seen in the B-2 Test Stand during a scheduled eight minute duration hot fire test, Saturday, Jan. 16, 2021, at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Credits: NASA/Robert Markowitz

In November of 2021, NASA will embark on a new era of space exploration as they make the inaugural launch of the Space Launch System (SLS). When it enters service, this booster will be the most powerful rocket since the Saturn V, which took the Apollo astronauts to the Moon. This is fitting since the SLS will be the rocket returning astronauts to the Moon by 2024 (as part of Project Artemis).

To get the SLS ready for its first launch, NASA has been running the Core Stage through a series of tests designed to test all the systems and components of the heavy-launch system – collectively known as a “Green Run.” The next step in this process will be a second Green Run Hot Fire Test, where all four RS-25 engines on the SLS Core Stage will fire at once to show they can operate as part of a single integrated system.

February 4, 2021February 1, 2021 by Paul M. Sutter

Astronomers are now Finding Planetary Disks Around the Smallest, Least Massive Stars

Astronomers have been watching planetary systems form around sun-like stars for decades. And now, new observations with the ALMA telescope reveal the same process playing out around the smallest, but most common, stars in galaxy.

February 4, 2021February 4, 2021 by Matt Williams

Every Challenge Astronauts Will Face on a Flight to Mars

Nuclear-powered transit habitat — An artist's conception shows a Mars transit habitat with a nuclear propulsion system. Credit: NASA

In 1972, the Space Race officially ended as NASA sent one last crew of astronauts to the surface of the Moon (Apollo 17). This was the brass ring that both the US and the Soviets were reaching for, the “Moonshot” that would determine who had supremacy in space. In the current age of renewed space exploration, the next great leap will clearly involve sending astronauts to Mars.

This will present many challenges that will need to be addressed in advance, many of which have to do with simply getting the astronauts there in one piece! These challenges were the subject of a presentation made by two Indian researchers at the SciTech Forum 2020, an annual event hosted by the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), RUDN University, and the American Astronomical Society (AAS).

February 4, 2021February 6, 2021 by Paul M. Sutter

Narrowing Down the Mass of Dark Matter

A section of the virtual universe, a billion light years across, showing how dark matter is distributed in space, with dark matter halos the yellow clumps, interconnected by dark filaments. Cosmic void, shown as the white areas, are the lowest density regions in the Universe. Credit: Joachim Stadel, UZH

Most of the matter of the universe is of a form unknown to physics. While we don’t know what the identity of the dark matter is, a new insight provided by quantum gravity is helping to drastically narrow down its mass.

February 4, 2021February 4, 2021 by Evan Gough

It Looks Like Iceberg A-68A is Coming Apart

A-68 iceberg positions as seen by Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission on January 30 2021. Image Credit: ESA

Iceberg A-68A, the massive frigid behemoth posing a threat to South Georgia Island, might be breaking into pieces. Satellite images from the European Space Agency showed large cracks forming in the iceberg.

Now it appears to breaking apart.

February 4, 2021February 4, 2021 by David Dickinson

BluShift Aerospace Launches Stardust 1.0 Rocket

Maine-based BluShift Aerospace launches of a unique rocket from a Cold War Air Force base.

A small company took a major step towards the reality of a ‘Spaceport Maine’ this past weekend. After several attempts, the Maine-based company BluShift Aerospace successfully launched its first rocket from Loring Commerce Center in Northern Maine this past weekend, with the liftoff of Stardust 1.0.

The day dawned clear, but a chilly -14 degrees Fahrenheit (-26 degrees Celsius). The launch of the single-stage 20-foot high Stardust 1.0 rocket went off at 2:47 PM Eastern Standard Time (EST)/19:47 Universal Time (UT) on Sunday, January 31^st, reaching an apogee of 4,054 feet (1,236 meters). For the first launch, the rocket was actually purposely under-fueled to stay under FAA time and height restrictions for amateur rocketry, though the company has big plans for Stardust and a new generation of rockets, leading up to orbital launches from Maine in coming years.