There’s still a raging debate in some circles as to whether Pluto should be a planet or not. Ask an astronomer, and their typical answer would be something like – if Pluto is a planet, then there are plenty of other bodies out there in the solar system that should be considered one too. One of those is Haumea, a little explored rock in the Kuiper belt that is one of the strangest large objects out there. Now, a team from NASA has a new idea as to how it got that way.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Side-by-side pictures from NASA’s 32-year-old Hubble Space Telescope and the brand-new James Webb Space Telescope may draw oohs and ahhs, but they don’t give you a full sense of just how much more astronomers are getting from the new kid on the cosmic block.
In a recent study accepted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, an international team of researchers led by Texas A&M University investigate how the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can detect a variety of exoplanets orbiting the nearest 15 white dwarfs to Earth using its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) Medium Resolution Spectrograph (MRS). This study holds the potential to expand our knowledge of exoplanets, their planetary compositions, and if they can support life.
In the coming decade, NASA and the China National Space Agency (CNSA) will send the first astronaut crews to Mars. Unlike missions to the International Space Station (ISS) or the Moon, crewed missions to Mars present several unique challenges because of the distance and transit times involved. For instance, it is only practical to send missions to Mars when our two planets are closest to each other in their orbits (known as “Opposition“), which occurs every 26 months. Even then, it can take up to nine months for spacecraft to reach Mars, creating all kinds of logistics headaches.
A worldwide team of dedicated observers ‘stood in the shadow’ of asteroid Didymos recently, as it passed in front of a distant star.
The life of every star is a fight against gravity. Stars are so massive they risk collapsing under their own weight, but this is balanced by the heat and pressure a star generates through nuclear fusion. Eventually, that comes to an end. The outer layers of a star will be cast off, and the remaining core will become a stellar remnant. Which kind of remnant depends on the mass of the core.
We may take it for granted, but every day we receive picture postcards from the robotic travelers we have sent out to explore our Solar System. Usually, we get to see faraway planets, moons, asteroids, or comets. But sometimes we get to see ourselves.
When we look at images of star birth regions, they look both placid and active at the same time. That’s nowhere more true than in a stellar nursery associated with a so-called “Herbig-Haro” object. A recent image from Hubble Space Telescope zeroed in on two called “HH 1” and “HH 2”. It looked at the turbulence associated with a nearby newborn star system.
In a few years, NASA and the ESA will conduct the long-awaited Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. This mission will consist of a lander that will pick up the samples, an ascent vehicle that will send them to orbit, an orbiter that will return them to Earth, and an entry vehicle that will send them to the surface. This will be the first time samples obtained directly from Mars will be returned to Earth for analysis. The research this will enable is expected to yield new insights into the history of Mars and how it evolved to become what we see today.
The Fermi Paradox won’t go away. It’s one of our most compelling thought experiments, and generations of scientists keep wrestling with it. The paradox pits high estimates for the number of civilizations in the galaxy against the fact that we don’t see any of those civs. It says that if rapidly expanding civilizations exist in the Milky Way, one should have arrived here in our Solar System. The fact that none have implies that none exist.
Earlier this month we asked, what could be better than a pair of galaxies observed by a pair of iconic space telescopes. Now, there is an exciting new answer. Even better than a pair of galaxies is a pair of galaxies that are colliding!
A prototype of ESA’s new heavy lift rocket is now fully assembled and sitting on the launchpad at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. But according to officials at a briefing last week, the space agency and the rocket’s prime contractor, ArianeGroup, have decided to delay the first flight of the Ariane 6 to the fourth quarter of 2023 after several issues were brought to the fore in an external review.
Gravitational assists are marvels of orbital mechanics. Usually, they are done for a combination of fuel (i.e., cost) savings and speed, as it is sometimes faster to take multiple trips around planets in the inner solar system to reach locations in the outer solar system more quickly. Lucy recently made such a maneuver on its way out to the Trojan asteroids along Jupiter’s orbit, and its close pass was both a marvel of precision and speed.
The Universe is over 13 billion years old, so a 12-year slice of that time might seem uneventful. But a timelapse movie from NASA shows how much can change in just over a decade. Stars pulse, asteroids follow their trajectories, and distant black holes flare as they pull gas and dust toward themselves.
It’s been a banner time for black hole research! In recent months, astrophysicists have announced the discovery of the most powerful gamma-ray burst ever recorded (due to the formation of a black hole), a monster black hole in our cosmic backyard, the frame-dragging effects of a binary black hole, and the remains of the 2017 Kilonova event (spoiler alert: it was a black hole). And with the help of citizen scientists, a team of astronomers recently discovered a unique black hole in a galaxy roughly one billion light-years away that’s hurling a relativistic jet at another galaxy.
If you think writing paper is expensive these days, be glad you didn’t live in the middle ages. Back then, paper was as rare as hen’s teeth, so good luck finding some to write one. But if you happened to be a monk, chances are there were plenty of old books made of parchment. Many of them have useless stuff like old star catalogs, so why not just recycle the parchment for your new copy of religious literature?
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.
NASA scientist have released images combining the early data from the James Webb Space Telescope with X-ray data taken with the Chandra Observatory. Besides their beauty, the images offer insights into the inner workings of some of the most complex astrophysical phenomena in the universe.
The Pillars of Creation revealed by JWST. It seems like Big Rip isn’t happening after all. Black holes twisting spacetime into knots. Jets that seem to be going faster than the speed of light.
We recently examined how and why the planet Venus could answer the longstanding question: Are we alone? Despite its harsh environment on the surface, its atmosphere could be hospitable for life as we know it. Here, we will examine the planet Mars, aka the Red Planet and the fourth planet in our solar system, which has been marveling sky watchers from ancient times to the present day.
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