Universe Today

July 31, 2020July 31, 2020 by Andy Tomaswick

This Is Fascinating. An Image of a Galaxy’s Magnetic Field

There’s always more than one way to look at the world. There’s also more than one way to look at a galaxy. And sometimes combining those ways of looking can result in something truly special.

That is what happened recently when a team of astronomers from seven different universities in four different countries used three different telescopes to produce an absolutely spectacular image of a galaxy and its surrounding magnetic field.

July 31, 2020July 31, 2020 by Matt Williams

There are Natural Starshades Out There, Which Would Help Astronomers Image Exoplanets

TOI 1338 b is a circumbinary planet orbiting its two stars. It was discovered by TESS. Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith

In the past few decades, the study of extrasolar planets has grown by leaps and bounds, with the confirmation of over 4000 exoplanets. With so many planets available for study, the focus of exoplanet-researchers is shifting from discovery to characterization. In the coming years, new technologies and next-generation telescopes will also enable Direct Imaging studies, which will vastly improve our understanding of exoplanet atmospheres.

To facilitate this process, astronomers will rely on costly technologies like coronagraphs and starshades, which block out the light of a star so any planets orbiting it will become more visible. However, according to a new study by an international team of astronomers and cosmologists, eclipsing binary stars could provide all the shading that’s needed to directly image planets orbiting them.

July 31, 2020July 30, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

Supermassive black holes can cloak themselves in a cocoon of dust, making them invisible even when they should be bright quasars

Artist's impression of a shroud of dust cloaking a supermassive black hole, alongside the X-ray view of where black holes should be. Image credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Penn State/B.Luo et al; Illustration: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss

Quasars are the most powerful sources of light in the universe, but sometimes they’re hard to find. A team of astronomers used the Chandra X-ray Space Telescope to find some diamonds in the rough.

July 31, 2020January 27, 2021 by Nancy Atkinson

China’s Mars Mission Took This Picture of the Earth and Moon

No matter where you are, where you’ve been and where you’re going, it’s always good to see home. And we all love seeing pictures of our home planet, as seen from space.

July 30, 2020July 30, 2020 by Evan Gough

Earth Observation Satellites Could be Flown Much Lower than Current Altitudes and Do Better Science

A satellite image of Tropical Depression Cristobal over the US. Image Credit: NASA Earth Observatory.

Satellite engineers know what every photographer knows: get close to your subject to get better pictures. Not just visible light pictures, but all across the spectrum. The lower altitude also improves things like radar, lidar, communications, and gps.

But when your subject is Earth, and Earth is surrounded by an atmosphere, getting closer is a delicate dance with physics. The closer a satellite gets to Earth, the more atmospheric drag it encounters. And that can mean an unscheduled plummet to destruction for Earth-Observing (EO) satellites.

July 30, 2020July 30, 2020 by Nancy Atkinson

Perseverance Rover Rumbles Off the Launchpad to Mars

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket with NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover onboard launches from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Thursday, July 30, 2020, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Perseverance rover is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the Red Planet. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)

NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is now successfully on its journey to Mars, launching from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 7:50 am EDT (1150 GMT). Just minutes before the Atlas 5 rocket rumbled off the launchpad, a 2.9 magnitude earthquake rumbled out in California, giving a minor shake to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, the Control Center for the rover.

July 30, 2020July 30, 2020 by Paul M. Sutter

There’s a flash of ultraviolet just as a white dwarf is exploding as a supernova

Artist's impression of a supernova. Supernovae bombarded Earth with radiation that has implications for the development of life on Earth. Image Credit: NASA

Astronomers recently spotted a rare type of supernova explosion that was accompanied by a massive flare of ultraviolet radiation. Untangling the mystery of the UV flash could help unravel the mysterious nature of these supernova explosions, and even help us understand the age of the universe.

July 29, 2020February 7, 2022 by Matt Williams

Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” IV: What is the Rare Earth Hypothesis?

Welcome back to our Fermi Paradox series, where we take a look at possible resolutions to Enrico Fermi’s famous question, “Where Is Everybody?” Today, we examine the possibility that planets capable of supporting life are simply too rare.

In 1950, Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi sat down to lunch with some of his colleagues at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he had worked five years prior as part of the Manhattan Project. According to various accounts, the conversation turned to aliens and the recent spate of UFOs. Into this, Fermi issued a statement that would go down in the annals of history: “Where is everybody?“

This became the basis of the Fermi Paradox, which refers to the high probability estimates for the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) and the apparent lack of evidence. Seventy years later, we still haven’t answered that question, which has led to many theories as to why the “Great Silence” endures. Today, we address another, which is the possibility that life-bearing planets like Earth are just very rare.

July 29, 2020July 29, 2020 by Evan Gough

A Group of Meteorites All Came From a Destroyed Planetesimal With a Magnetic Core

Samples from a rare meteorite family, including the one shown here, reveal that their parent planetesimal, formed in the earliest stages of the solar system, was a complex, layered object, with a molten core and solid crust similar to Earth. Photo credit: Carl Agee, Institute of Meteoritics, University of New Mexico. Background edited by MIT News.

Before our Solar System had planets, it had planetesimals. Scientists think that most of the meteorites that have struck Earth are fragments of these planetesimals. Scientists also think that these planetesimals either melted completely, very early in their history, or that they remained as little more than collections of rocks, or “rubble piles.”

But one family of meteorites, that have been found spread around the world, appear to come from a planetesimal that bucked that trend.

July 29, 2020July 29, 2020 by Nancy Atkinson

Thanks to Cosmic Radiation, There Could be Life on Mars, Just a Couple of Meters Under the Surface

Remember back in 2008 when the Phoenix lander on Mars scraped away a few inches of rust-colored regolith to reveal water ice? Or in 2009, when Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter observations revealed vast areas of subsurface ice, event at low latitudes?

These findings – and many more like them – indicate there’s a lot of interesting things going on underneath Mars’ lifeless surface. Since we know from experience on Earth that anywhere there is water, there is life, the question of life on – or under – Mars’s surface is always provocative.