Space and astronomy news
Neutrinos are puzzling things. They’re tiny particles, almost massless, with no electrical charge. They’re notoriously difficult to detect, too, and scientists have gone to great lengths to detect them. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, for instance, tries to detect neutrinos with strings of detectors buried down to a depth of 2450 meters (8000 ft.) in the dark Antarctic ice.
How’s that for commitment.
Continue reading “Detecting the Neutrinos From a Supernova That’s About to Explode”
Missing the planets in the first half of 2020? That’s all about to change, as the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn reach opposition in rapid succession this month, heralding a return to the dusk sky.
Continue reading “Dawn Patrol: Jupiter and Saturn at Opposition 2020”
Dark matter is one of the least understood aspects in physics. The evidence for dark matter is from its gravitational influence on galactic scales which cannot be explained by the presence of conventional matter. Despite its large gravitational interactions, it is notoriously difficult to learn about dark matter as it does not interact with electromagnetic fields, hence the name of “dark” matter.
But just because it is difficult to get it to interact with anything on the electromagnetic spectrum does not mean it is impossible to detect other feeble interactions it may have. A team of theoretical physicists from Caltech have recently proposed a novel type of experiment that may just hold the key to understanding dark matter with specific types of interactions.
Continue reading “A Tabletop-sized Experiment Could Help in the Search for Dark Matter”
This past weekend (June 5th), the California and New Zealand-based aerospace company Rocket Lab suffered a terrible accident. During the 13th launch of their Electron rocket, an anomaly caused the second stage of the rocket to explode in midair. Luckily, there were no injuries, but the explosion did claim the mission payload, which consisted of satellites and commercial payloads for three different companies.
Continue reading “Electron Rocket’s 13th Launch Failed, Destroying its Satellite Payload”
The Corona Australis is a constellation in the southern hemisphere. It’s name literally means “southern crown.” One of its features is the Corona Australis molecular cloud, home to a star-forming region containing young stars and proto-stars. It’s one of the closest star-forming regions to us, only about 430 light years away.
The ESA has given us a new composite image of the cloud with data from the Herschel Space Observatory and the Planck Space Observatory.
Continue reading “The Corona Australis Molecular Cloud. Normally this Looks Like a Dark Blob in the Sky. But in Infrared, it Looks Like This.”
A new study shows that the Moon is more metal-rich than previously thought. That has some far-reaching implications for our understanding of the Moon’s formation. If their results are solid, it means that we may need to re-think the giant impact hypothesis for the formation of the Moon.
Continue reading “The Moon Might Be More Metal-Rich Than We Thought”
There’s a new storm brewing on Jupiter. The most famous storm on Jupiter is the Great Red Spot, which has been active since at least the time of Galileo. Most of Jupiter’s storms don’t last for hundreds of years. They grow and fade just as they do on Earth. This latest storm was discovered by amateur astronomer Clyde Foster.
Continue reading “Amateur Astronomers Find a Brand New Storm on Jupiter”
A few months ago we all watched as Betelgeuse dimmed. Between October 2019 and 22nd of February 2020 the star’s brightness dropped by a factor of about three. It went from magnitude 0.5, and from being the tenth-brightest star in the sky, to magnitude 1.7.
Naturally, we all wondered what was happening. Would it go supernova? Even though that was extremely unlikely, how could we help but wonder?
Continue reading “Betelgeuse Probably Dimmed Because of Enormous Starspots”
The Hubble Space Telescope has the knack for finding every size and shape of galaxy imaginable – from small, medium to large, all the way up to that funky size of absolute units.
Continue reading “NGC 2275: An Absolute Unit of Galactic Flocculence”
In July there’s another launch window to Mars. It looks like China is ready to take advantage of it, by launching their first rover to the planet. It’s called Tianwen-1, meaning “Heavenly Questions”, or “Questions to Heaven.” The complete mission consists of a lander, an orbiter, and a rover.
Continue reading “China’s Mars Rover Launches in Late July”