Universe Today

November 12, 2019November 12, 2019 by Evan Gough

Satellites Watched Mercury’s Transit From Space, Confirming That Yes, the Sun Has At Least One Planet

Do you wonder how astronomers find all those exoplanets orbiting stars in distant solar systems?

Mostly they use the transit method. When a planet travels in between its star and an observer, the light from the star dims. That’s called a transit. If astronomers watch a planet transit its star a few times, they can confirm its orbital period. They can also start to understand other things about the planet, like its mass and density.

The planet Mercury just transited the Sun, giving us all an up close look at transits.

November 12, 2019November 12, 2019 by Susie Murph

Carnival of Space #637

Carnival of Space. Image by Jason Major.

Welcome to the 637th Carnival of Space! The Carnival is a community of space science and astronomy writers and bloggers, who submit their best work each week for your benefit. We have a fantastic roundup today so now, on to this week’s worth of stories!

November 12, 2019November 12, 2019 by David Dickinson

November Meteors: Taurids, Leonids and a Surprise Monocerotids Outburst

Two Taurid meteors from the November 2015 shower, on November 10, taken from home as part of testing the Nikon D810a and 14-24mm Nikon lens. Green airglow lights the sky, as well as horizon glows from distant lights on this very frosty and humid night for a late fall evening. This is a stack of two exposures, one for each meteor, each 60 seconds at f/2.8 and at 14mm and at ISO 800, both tracked on the AP Mach One mount. Image credit and copyright: Alan Dyer

For the northern hemisphere observers, November is fireball season. This month, keep an eye out for two sure-fire annual meteor showers, and—just maybe—a wild card outburst from the obscure Alpha Monocerotids worth watching out for.

November 11, 2019November 11, 2019 by Matt Williams

SpaceX Launches Another 60 Starlink Satellites

In May of 2019, Elon Musk began delivering on his promise to create a constellation of satellites (named Starlink) that would offer broadband internet access. It all started with the launch of the first sixty Starlink satellites and was followed by Musk sending the inaugural tweet using the service this past October. Earlier today, another batch of Starlink satellites was sent into space as part of a live-streamed launch event.

The mission, known as Starlink-1, saw the launch of another 60 satellites from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, atop a Falcon 9 rocket. Unlike previous launches, this mission involved the latest version of Starlink (Starlink 1.0), which feature a number of upgrades and refinements over the previous version (Starlink 0.9) and made this mission the heaviest Starlink launch to date.

November 10, 2019November 10, 2019 by Matt Williams

Watch a Simulation of a Galaxy, From the Big Bang Until the Present Day

Since the mid-20th century, scientists have had a pretty good idea of how the Universe came to be. Cosmic expansion and the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) lent credibility to the Big Bang Theory, and the accelerating rate of expansion led to theories about Dark Energy. Still, there is much about the early Universe that scientists still don’t know, which requires that they rely on simulations on cosmic evolution.

This has traditionally posed a bit of a problem since the limitations of computing meant that simulation could either be large scale or detailed, but not both. However, a team of scientists from Germany and the United States recently completed the most detailed large-scale simulation to date. Known as TNG50, this state-of-the-art simulation will allow researchers to study how the cosmos evolved in both detail and a large scale.

November 8, 2019November 8, 2019 by Matt Williams

TESS Has Now Captured Almost the Entire Southern Sky. Here’s a Mosaic Made of 15,347 Photographs

On April 18th, 2018, NASA’s Transitting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) took to space for the first time. By August, it began capturing the light curves of distant stars for signs of planetary transits, effectively picking up where the Kepler Space Telescope left off. Now, just a few months away from the end of its primary mission, NASA has put a year’s worth of images of the southern sky together to create the beautiful mosaic you see here.

November 7, 2019November 8, 2019 by Matt Williams

This Artificial Leaf Turns Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Into Fuel

Beads of rainwater on a poplar leaf act like lenses, focusing light and enlarging the leaf's network of veins. Credit: Bob King

There is no doubt that climate change is a very serious (and worsening) problem. According to a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), even if all the industrialized nations of the world became carbon neutral overnight, the problem would continue to get worse. In short, it’s not enough to stop pumping megatons of CO₂ into the atmosphere; we also have to start removing what we’ve already put there.

This is where the technique known as carbon capture (or carbon removal) comes into play. Taking their cue from nature, an international team of researchers from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, have created an “artificial leaf” that mimics the carbon-scrubbing abilities of the real thing. But rather than turning atmospheric CO₂ into a source of fuel for itself, the leaf converts it into a useful alternative fuel.

November 7, 2019May 18, 2021 by Matt Williams

NASA is Testing a Coating to Help Astronauts and Their Equipment Shed Dangerous Lunar Dust

Buzz Aldrin's bootprint on the surface of the moon during the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1969. Credit: NASA

In the coming years, NASA is going back to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo Era. Rather than being a “footprints and flags” operation, Project Artemis is intended to be the first step in creating a sustainable human presence on the Moon. Naturally, this presents a number of challenges, not the least of which has to do with lunar regolith (aka. moondust). For this reason, NASA is investigating strategies for mitigating this threat.

November 6, 2019February 12, 2020 by Evan Gough

What Voyager 2 Learned After Spending a Year in Interstellar Space

An artist concept depicting one of NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft, humanity's farthest and longest-lived spacecraft. Voyager 2 just lost contact with Earth while Voyager 1 is still reporting back. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Only two of humanity’s spacecraft have left the Solar System: NASA’s Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Voyager 1 left the heliosphere behind in 2012, while Voyager 2 did the same on Nov. 5th, 2018. Now Voyager 2 has been in interstellar space for one year, and five new papers are presenting the scientific results from that one year.

November 6, 2019November 10, 2019 by Susie Murph

Weekly Space Hangout: November 6, 2019 – Tiera & Myron Fletcher, Engineers on NASA’s Space Launch System

Hosts: Fraser Cain (universetoday.com / @fcain)

Nancy Atkinson ( @Nancy_A / @nancyatkinson_ut)

Beth Johnson (@planetarypan)

Veranika Klimovich ( @VeronikaSpace)

This week we welcome Tiera and Myron Fletcher, Aerospace Engineers with Boeing working on NASA’s Space Launch System.