Space and astronomy news
While the Earth absorbs a lot of energy from the Sun, a lot of it is reflected back into space. The sunlight reflected from Earth is called Earthshine. We can see it on the dark portion of the Moon during a crescent Moon. The Farmer’s Almanac said it used to be called “the new Moon …
Continue reading “Could Next-Generation Telescopes See That Earth Has Life?”
You’re looking at NGC 346, a star cluster 210 light years away that is energetically pumping out brand new stars from a dense cloud of gas and dust. Between 10 and 11 billion years ago, nearly all galaxies in the Universe underwent an era of intense star formation similar to what we see in NGC …
For planet-hunters, finding an Earth-sized exoplanet must be special. NASA estimates there are about 100 billion planets in the Milky Way, but the large majority of the 5,000+ exoplanets we’ve found are extremely inhospitable. So finding one that’s similar to ours is kind of comforting. In this case, it’s even more interesting because it’s the …
The James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful telescope ever launched into space. That power has led to a string of observational successes: ancient galaxies, obscured star-forming regions, and an exoplanet atmosphere. Now the telescope has identified its first exoplanet, and it’s a rocky planet the same size as Earth.
Breakthrough Listen, a privately funded project seeking evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, has started operations on the MeerKAT radio telescope array in South Africa. Over the next two years, the team will search over a million nearby stars, expanding the number of targets observed by a factor of 1000.
A team of astronomers has caught glimpses of gas giants forming around a very young star. The nascent giants are having a chilling effect on their potential siblings.
New research has shown that Mars may have been covered in a worldwide ocean when Earth was still covered in molten lava.
Is there anything good about volcanoes? They can be violent, dangerous, and unpredictable. For modern humans, volcanoes are mostly an inconvenience, sometimes an intriguing visual display, and occasionally deadly. But when there’s enough of them, and when they’re powerful and prolonged, they can kill the planet that hosts them.
What if you placed an Earth-sized planet in a close orbit around an M-dwarf star? It’s more than an academic question since M dwarfs are the most numerous stars we know. A group of astronomers studying the planet GJ 1252b found an answer and it’s not pretty.
A team of astronomers have proposed to hunt for signs of life by looking for the signature of nitrous oxide in alien atmospheres. It’s laughing gas, but it’s no joke.