Posted on by Evan Gough

This Star has been Kicked Out of the Milky Way. It Knows What It Did.

Researchers from the University of Michigan confirm that a runaway star was ejected from the Milky Way's disk rather than the galactic core. Image Credit: Kohei Hattori
Researchers from the University of Michigan confirm that a runaway star was ejected from the Milky Way's disk rather than the galactic core. Image Credit: Kohei Hattori

Every once in a while, the Milky Way ejects a star. The evicted star is typically ejected from the chaotic area at the center of the galaxy, where our Super Massive Black Hole (SMBH) lives. But at least one of them was ejected from the comparatively calm galactic disk, a discovery that has astronomers rethinking this whole star ejection phenomenon.

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Posted on by David Dickinson

The Iridium Flare Era is About to End

iridium flare
An Iridium flare slices through the twilight sky. Image credit and copyright: Alan Dyer.

You never forget your first one. I remember reading about a curious new set of flaring satellites, known as Iridiums. This was waaaaay back in the late 1990s, when we still occasionally read things in something called magazines, which involved pressing ink into plant-flesh to convey information.

Fast-forward to 2019, and the age of the predictable Iridium flare may be coming to an end. Already, scrolling through Heavens-Above reveals very few Iridium flares for the coming months, and these familiar nighttime flashes may become a thing of the past come the end of the decade in 2020.

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Posted on by Evan Gough

New Ring of Dust Discovered in the Inner Solar System

An illustration of the dust rings around the Sun. Image Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith
An illustration of the dust rings around the Sun. Image Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith

Discovering new things in space is a regular occurrence. Astronomers keep finding more distant objects in the outer reaches of the Solar System. Worlds like ‘The Goblin,’ ‘FarOut,’ and ‘FarFarOut‘ are stretching the limits of what our Solar System actually is.

But finding new things in the inner Solar System is rare.

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Posted on by Evan Gough

This is the Final Photograph from Opportunity

Opportunity's final image. Image Credit: NASA/JPL
Opportunity's final image. Image Credit: NASA/JPL

Sad.

But beautiful.

NASA has shared Opportunity’s final photograph from the surface of Mars. The rover’s final resting place is in Endeavour Crater, and barring any statistically unlikely event, it will sit there for centuries, millennia, or even longer. And instead of a tombstone, we have this final image.

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Posted on by Susie Murph

Weekly Space Hangout: Mar 13, 2019 – Dr. Luisa Rebull, Spitzer, and Star Formation

Hosts:
Fraser Cain (universetoday.com / @fcain)
Dr. Paul M. Sutter (pmsutter.com / @PaulMattSutter)
Dr. Kimberly Cartier (KimberlyCartier.org / @AstroKimCartier )
Dr. Morgan Rehnberg (MorganRehnberg.com / @MorganRehnberg & ChartYourWorld.org)

Dr. Luisa Rebull is an astronomer studying the properties of young stars, specifically evolution of rotation rates, disks, accretion rates, and Li abundances.

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Posted on by Evan Gough

This is What It’ll Look Like When the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies Collide Billions of Years from Now

Located in the constellation of Hercules, about 230 million light-years away, NGC 6052 is a pair of colliding galaxies. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Adamo et al.
Located in the constellation of Hercules, about 230 million light-years away, NGC 6052 is a pair of colliding galaxies. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Adamo et al.

What happens when two galaxies collide? The Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy are on a collision course, and in about 4.5 billion years, they will meet. Now astronomers using the Hubble have provided some visual insight into what that collision might look like.

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Posted on by Evan Gough

China’s Lunar Rover Wakes Up and Gets to Work for its 3rd Lunar Day

China's Yutu-2 rover captured this image of the lunar surface during its third lunar day. Image Credit: CLEP/CNSA
China's Yutu-2 rover captured this image of the lunar surface during its third lunar day. Image Credit: CLEP/CNSA

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has released some new photos and updated the world on their lunar rover mission. The Yutu-2 rover is working its way into the history books on the lunar far side, exploring the Von Karman crater. It’s third lunar day is now in the record books.

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Posted on by Matt Williams

Using Black Holes to Conquer Space: The Halo Drive!

Close-up of star near a supermassive black hole (artist’s impression). Credit: ESA/Hubble, ESO, M. Kornmesser

The idea of one day traveling to another star system and seeing what is there has been the fevered dream of people long before the first rockets and astronauts were sent to space. But despite all the progress we have made since the beginning of the Space Age, interstellar travel remains just that – a fevered dream. While theoretical concepts have been proposed, the issues of cost, travel time and fuel remain highly problematic.

A lot of hopes currently hinge on the use of directed energy and lightsails to push tiny spacecrafts to relativistic speeds. But what if there was a way to make larger spacecraft fast enough to conduct interstellar voyages? According to Prof. David Kipping – the leader of Columbia University’s Cool Worlds lab – future spacecraft could rely on a Halo Drive, which uses the gravitational force of a black hole to reach incredible speeds.

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Posted on by Evan Gough

Jupiter or Earth? Which One’s Which, and Why Do They Look so Similar?

Though Jupiter and Earth are wildly differing places, some things are the same on both worlds. Image Credit: NASA
Though Jupiter and Earth are wildly differing places, some things are the same on both worlds. Image Credit: NASA

Jupiter: a massive, lifeless gas giant out there on the other side of the asteroid belt. It’s a behemoth, containing 2.5 times as much mass as all the other planets combined. To top it off, it’s named after the Roman God of War.

Earth: a tiny rocky world, almost too close to the Sun, where life rises and falls, punctuated repeatedly by extinctions. Compared to Jupiter, it’s a gum-drop world: Jupiter is 317.8 times the mass of Earth. And Earth is named after a goddess in German paganism, or so we think.

“Out of all the complexity flows beauty…”

Norman Kuring, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

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