Space and astronomy news
An ancient passerby may have visited the Sun and inadvertently helped shape the Solar System into what it is today. It happened billions of years ago when a stellar drifter came to within 110 astronomical units (AU) of our Sun. The effects were long-lasting and we can see evidence of the visitor’s fleeting encounter throughout the Solar System.
Continue reading “A Stellar Flyby Jumbled Up the Outer Solar System”
After about 10 years of construction, the Vera Rubin Observatory (VRO) is scheduled to see its first light in January 2025. Once it’s up and running, it will begin its Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), a decade-long effort to photograph the entire visible sky every few nights. It’ll study dark energy and dark matter, map the Milky Way, and detect transient astronomical events and small Solar System objects like Near Earth Objects (NEOs).
New research shows the LSST will detect about 130 NEOs per night in the first year of observations.
Continue reading “The Rubin Observatory Will Unleash a Flood of NEO Detections”
Consumer-grade AI is finding its way into people’s daily lives with its ability to generate text and images and automate tasks. But astronomers need much more powerful, specialized AI. The vast amounts of observational data generated by modern telescopes and observatories defies astronomers’ efforts to extract all of its meaning.
Continue reading “Astronomy Generates Mountains of Data. That’s Perfect for AI”
Does another undetected planet languish in our Solar System’s distant reaches? Does it follow a distant orbit around the Sun in the murky realm of comets and other icy objects? For some researchers, the answer is “almost certainly.”
Continue reading “New Evidence for Our Solar System’s Ghost: Planet Nine”
The Milky Way is ancient and massive, a collection of hundreds of billions of stars, some dating back to the Universe’s early days. During its long life, it’s grown to these epic proportions through mergers with other, smaller galaxies. These mergers punctuate our galaxy’s history, and its story is written in the streams of stars left behind as evidence after a merger.
And it’s still happening today.
Continue reading “The Milky Way’s History is Written in Streams of Stars”
When the interstellar object (ISO) Oumuamua appeared in our Solar System in 2017, it generated a ton of interest. The urge to learn more about it was fierce, but unfortunately, there was no way to really do so. It came and went, and we were left to ponder what it was made of and where it came from. Then, in 2019, the ISO comet Borisov came for a brief visit, and again, we were left to wonder about it.
There’s bound to be more of these ISOs traversing our Solar System. There’s been talk of having missions ready to go to visit one of these interstellar visitors in the future, but for that to happen, we need advance notice of its arrival. Could the Vera Rubin Observatory tell us far enough in advance?
Continue reading “The Vera Rubin’s Keen Eye On Our Solar System Will Inspire Future Missions”
The Vera Rubin Observatory (VRO) is different than other large telescopes, and that difference makes it more vulnerable to space junk. Other telescopes, like the Giant Magellan Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope, focus on distant objects. But the VRO’s job is to repeatedly image the entire available night sky for ten years, spotting transients and variable objects.
All that space junk can look like transient events, impairing the VRO’s vision and polluting its results.
Continue reading “Space Junk is Going to be a Problem for Vera Rubin”
When galaxies merge, we expect them to produce binary black holes (BBHs.) BBHs orbit one another closely, and when they merge, they produce gravitational waves that have been detected by LIGO-Virgo. The upcoming Vera Rubin Observatory should be able to find them before they merge, which would open a whole new window into the study of galaxy mergers, supermassive black holes, binary black holes, and gravitational waves.
Continue reading “Vera Rubin Will Find Binary Supermassive Black Holes. Here’s How.”