Universe Today

February 10, 2024February 10, 2024 by Matt Williams

NASA Launches a New Mission to Study the Effects of Climate Change

NASA's PACE mission launches from Cape Canaveral on Feb. 9th, 2024. Credit: NASA

NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Climate, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite successfully launched and reached on Thursday, February 10th. The mission took off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, at 1:33 am EST 10:33 pm (PST) atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. About five minutes after launch, NASA confirmed that ground stations on Earth had acquired a signal from the satellite and were receiving data on its operational status and capabilities post-launch. For the next three years, the mission will monitor Earth’s ocean and atmosphere and study the effects of climate change.

February 10, 2024February 10, 2024 by Brian Koberlein

The Event Horizon Telescope Zooms in on a Black Hole's Jet

The jet of the black hole in 3C 84 at different spatial scales. Credit: Georgios Filippos Paraschos (MPIfR)

Although supermassive black holes are common throughout the Universe, we don’t have many direct images of them. The problem is that while they can have a mass of millions or billions of stars, even the nearest supermassive black holes have tiny apparent sizes. The only direct images we have are those of M87* and Sag A*, and it took a virtual telescope the size of Earth to capture them. But we are still in the early days of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), and improvements are being made to the virtual telescope all the time. Which means we are starting to look at more supermassive black holes.

February 8, 2024February 8, 2024 by Matt Williams

Fragments From That Asteroid That Exploded Above Berlin Have Been Recovered and They're Really Special

Artist's impression of a Near-Earth Asteroid passing by Earth. Credit: ESA

On January 21st, 2024, a meter-sized asteroid (2024 BX1) entered Earth’s atmosphere and exploded over Berlin at 12:33 am UTC (07:45 pm EST; 04:33 pm PST). Before it reached Earth, 2024 BX₁ was a Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) with an orbit that suggests it was part of the Apollo group. The fragments have since been located by a team of scientists from the Freie Universität Berlin, the Museum für Naturkunde (MfN), the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Technische Universität Berlin, and the SETI Institute and identified as a rare type of asteroid known as “aubrites.”

February 8, 2024February 8, 2024 by Andy Tomaswick

The Early Universe Had Small Galaxies with Oversized Black Holes

When doing the marketing for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), NASA and the other telescope contributors liked to point out how it would open up the early universe to scrutiny. They weren’t exaggerating, and now scientific studies are starting to proliferate that show why. A new study published by authors from Harvard, the University of Arizona, and the University of Cambridge used three surveys produced by the JWST to analyze the supermassive black holes at the center of early galaxies. And they found they were much different than the one at the center of our own, at least in terms of relative size.

February 8, 2024February 8, 2024 by Evan Gough

Hubble Sees a Bridge of Stars Connecting Two Galaxies

The galaxy NGC 5427 shines in this new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image. Image Credits: NASA, ESA, and R. Foley (University of California – Santa Cruz); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

The poetic-minded among us like to point out how Nature is a dance. If they’re right, then galaxies sometimes form unwieldy pairs. With the Hubble Space Telescope, we can spot some of these galactic pairs as they approach one another.

February 8, 2024February 8, 2024 by Evan Gough

NASA’s JPL Lays Off Hundreds of Workers

NASA's JPL announced a quick reduction in its workforce, putting missions like Mars Sample Return in jeopardy. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech

In a disheartening turn of events, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has announced that it’s laying off about 8% of its workforce. That means that about 530 JPL employees will be let go, along with about 40 employees of the Lab’s contractors. That sucks for the people being let go, but the bigger concern for the rest of us is what will happen to upcoming missions like Mars Sample Return (MSR)?

February 8, 2024February 8, 2024 by Brian Koberlein

Did the Galileo Mission Find Life on Earth?

An image of Earth taken by the Galileo spacecraft in 1990. Credit: NASA/JPL

In the Fall of 1989, the Galileo spacecraft was launched into space, bound for Jupiter and its family of moons. Given the great distance to the king of planets, Galileo had to take a roundabout tour through the inner solar system, making a flyby of Venus in 1990 and Earth in 1990 and 1992 just to gain enough speed to reach Jupiter. During the flybys of Earth Galileo took several images of our planet, which astronomers have used to discover life on Earth.

February 8, 2024February 8, 2024 by Mark Thompson

NASA Gives Dreamchaser the Shakedown

Dreamchaser sat atop the shaker system at NASA (Image Credit : NASA)

It’s been a while since NASA has had a spaceplane on the launchpad but this now feels closer than ever again. Their new prototype cargo spaceplane known as Dream Chaser is now undergoing vibration and vacuum testing at the Neil Armstrong test facility. The tests sound a little strange perhaps but on launch and during re-entry it will most definitely experience shaking during these phases of the flights.

February 8, 2024February 8, 2024 by David Dickinson

The Comet vs. the Eclipse: 12P/Pons-Brooks Heads Towards Perihelion in April

Comet 12P Pons-Brooks takes center stage this Spring.

Something is definitely up with the 12^th periodic comet in the catalog. We’re talking about Comet 12P Pons-Brooks, set to reach the first of two perihelia for the 21^st century this Spring. And the timing couldn’t be better, as the comet will also sit near the Sun just two weeks prior during the total solar eclipse of April 8^th 2024, spanning the North American continent from the southwest to the northeast. If the comet over-performs—a long shot, but multiple outbursts in 2023 suggest it just might—we could be in for the added treat of a naked eye comet near the Sun during totality.

February 8, 2024February 8, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Gravitationally Lensed Supernovae are Another Way to Measure the Expansion of the Universe

Hubble Space Telescope image of a gravitational lens. — This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the powerful gravity of a galaxy embedded in a massive cluster of galaxies producing multiple images of a single distant supernova far behind it.

Supernova are a fascinating phenomenon and have taught us much about the evolution of stars. The upcoming Nancy Grace Roman telescope will be hunting the elusive combination of supernovae in a gravitational lens system. With its observing field 200 times that of Hubble it stands a much greater chance of success. If sufficient lensed supernovae are found then they could be used to determine the expansion rate of the Universe.