Universe Today

April 10, 2019April 10, 2019 by Matt Williams

Two Solar Eclipses Seen From the Surface of Mars by Curiosity

The Martian moon Phobos as it crossed in front of the Sun, as seen by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on Sunday, March 26, 2019 (Sol 2359). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Ever since the Curiosity rover landed on Mars in 2012, it has provided NASA scientists with invaluable data about the planet’s past, as well as some breathtaking images of the planet’s surface. Much like its predecessors, the Spirit and Opportunity rover, many of these images have shown what it is like to look up at the sky from the surface of Mars and witness celestial events.

Of these events, one of the most intriguing has to be the many Martian solar eclipses that have taken place since the rover’s landed. Last month, the Curiosity rover witnessed two eclipses as the moons of Phobos and Deimos both passed in front of the Sun. These latest eclipses will allow scientists to fine-tune their predictions about Mars’ satellites and how they orbit the Red Planet.

April 10, 2019April 10, 2019 by Evan Gough

It’s Finally here. The First Ever Image of a Black Hole

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) — a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration — was designed to capture images of a black hole. In coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers revealed that they succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of the supermassive black hole in the centre of Messier 87 and its shadow. The shadow of a black hole seen here is the closest we can come to an image of the black hole itself, a completely dark object from which light cannot escape. The black hole’s boundary — the event horizon from which the EHT takes its name — is around 2.5 times smaller than the shadow it casts and measures just under 40 billion km across. While this may sound large, this ring is only about 40 microarcseconds across — equivalent to measuring the length of a credit card on the surface of the Moon. Although the telescopes making up the EHT are not physically connected, they are able to synchronize their recorded data with atomic clocks — hydrogen masers — which precisely time their observations. These observations were collected at a wavelength of 1.3 mm during a 2017 global campaign. Each telescope of the EHT produced enormous amounts of data – roughly 350 terabytes per day – which was stored on high-performance helium-filled hard drives. These data were flown to highly specialised supercomputers — known as correlators — at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and MIT Haystack Observatory to be combined. They were then painstakingly converted into an image using novel computational tools developed by the collaboration. Credit: Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration

“We have taken the first picture of a black hole.”

EHT project director Sheperd S. Doeleman of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.

What was once un-seeable can now be seen. Black holes, those difficult-to-understand singularities that may reside at the center of every galaxy, are becoming seeable. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has revealed the first-ever image of a black hole, and with this image, and all the science behind it, they may help crack open one of the biggest mysteries in the Universe.

April 10, 2019April 10, 2019 by David Dickinson

SOFIA Follows the Sulfur for Clues on Stellar Evolution

The high-flying SOFIA telescope is shedding light on where some of the basic building blocks for life may have originated from. A recent study published on The Astrophysical Journal: Letters led by astronomers from the University of Hawaii, including collaborators from the University of California Davis, Johns-Hopkins University, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Appalachian State University, and several international partners (including funding from NASA), looked at a lingering mystery in planet formation: the chemical pathway of the element sulfur, and its implications and role in the formation of planets and life.

April 9, 2019April 9, 2019 by Evan Gough

The World’s Glaciers are Down by 9 Trillion Tonnes of Ice in the Last Half Century

This graphic shows the change in cumulative ice mass over the last 50 years in different glacial regions on Earth. Image Credit: ESA, adapted from Zemp et al. (2019) Nature, and data courtesy of World Glacier Monitoring Service

Things are not looking good for Earth’s glaciers. Usually, when it comes to climate change and melting ice, we think of the Earth’s polar regions. But they’re not the only important ice formations, and they’re not the only ice that’s melting due to climate change.

April 9, 2019June 17, 2022 by Evan Gough

Metal Asteroid Psyche Might Have Had Volcanoes of Molten Iron

An artist's illustration of a metallic asteroid like Psyche. Image Credit: Elena Hartley/USC — An artist's illustration of a metallic asteroid like Psyche. Credit: Elena Hartley/USC

Imagine a time in the Solar System’s past, when the asteroids were not solid rock, but blobs of molten iron. It sounds strange, but that may have been the case. And in the right conditions, some of those asteroids would have sprouted volcanoes. One of those asteroids, Psyche, is the destination for a NASA mission.

April 8, 2019December 2, 2019 by Tammy Plotner

Messier 83 – the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy

The beautiful spiral galaxy Messier 83 is located in the southern constellation Hydra. Credit: ESO

Welcome back to Messier Monday! Today, we continue in our tribute to our dear friend, Tammy Plotner, by looking at the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy – also known as Messier 83!

During the 18th century, famed French astronomer Charles Messier noticed the presence of several “nebulous objects” while surveying the night sky. Originally mistaking these objects for comets, he began to catalog them so that others would not make the same mistake. Today, the resulting list (known as the Messier Catalog) includes over 100 objects and is one of the most influential catalogs of Deep Space Objects.

One of these objects is the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy (aka. Messier 83), a barred spiral galaxy located 15.21 million light years from Earth in the southern constellation Hydra. With a spatial diameter of about 55,000 light years, or roughly half the size of the Milky Way, M83 is one of the nearest and brightest barred spirals in the sky.

Continue reading “Messier 83 – the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy”

April 8, 2019April 8, 2019 by Matt Williams

Hayabusa2 Fires an Anti-Tank Warhead at Asteroid Ryugu

Asteroid Ryugu, as imaged by the Hayabusa2 spacecraft. The red dot marks the sampling location. Image Credit: JAXA/Hayabusa2

Last week, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency‘s (JAXA) dropped an explosive warhead on the surface of asteroid 162173 Ryugu. You might think this was the opening line of an entirely-readable science fiction novel, but it’s totally true. The operation began on April 4th, when the Hayabusa2 spacecraft sent its Small Carry-on Impactor (SCI) down to Ryugu’s surface and then detonated it to create a crater.

April 8, 2019April 8, 2019 by Susie Murph

Ep. 525: 100 Years of the International Astronomical Union

Even though they might be scattered around our planet, astronomers have way to come together to work out issues that face their entire field of study. It’s called the International Astronomical Union, and they’re the ones who work out the new names for stars, and sometimes de-planet beloved Kuiper Belt Objects.
Continue reading “Ep. 525: 100 Years of the International Astronomical Union”

April 6, 2019April 6, 2019 by Matt Williams

Now We Know That Dark Matter Isn’t Primordial Black Holes

The early universe. Credit: Tom Abel & Ralf Kaehler (KIPACSLAC)/ AMNH/NASA

For over fifty years, scientists have theorized that roughly 85% of matter in the Universe’s is made up of a mysterious, invisible mass. Since then, multiple observation campaigns have indirectly witnessed the effects that this “Dark Matter” has on the Universe. Unfortunately, all attempts to detect it so far have failed, leading scientists to propose some very interesting theories about its nature.

One such theory was offered by the late and great Stephen Hawking, who proposed that the majority of dark matter may actually be primordial black holes (PBH) smaller than a tenth of a millimeter in diameter. But after putting this theory through its most rigorous test to date, an international team of scientists led from the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU) has confirmed that it is not.

April 4, 2019April 4, 2019 by Evan Gough

Mars Express Saw the Same Methane Spike that Curiosity Detected from the Surface of Mars

Mars Express, which is now studying Phobos. — An artist's illustration of the Mars Express Orbiter above Mars. Its MARSIS instrument has been updated so it can study the moon Phobos. Image Credit: Spacecraft: ESA/ATG medialab; Mars: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

If you’re not a chemist, an astrobiologist, or a scientist of any sort, and that includes most of us, then a tiny, almost imperceptible whiff of methane in the Martian atmosphere might seem like no big deal. But it is, gentle humans. It is.

Why?

Because it could be a signal that some living process is at work. And even we non-scientists have wondered at some point if the only life in the Solar System, or maybe in the entire Universe, is confined here on Earth.