If we want to know what it’ll look like in about 4.5 billion years when our galaxy merges with Andromeda, we might take a look at ARP 220. ARP 220 is a pair of galaxies that are in the process of merging. The merging galaxies emit brilliant infrared light, and the James Webb Space Telescope captured that light in a vivid portrait.
NASA has a long history of crowdsourcing solutions, seeking input from the public, entrepreneurs, and citizen scientists. Currently, the agency is tasked with preparing for the long-awaited return to the Moon (the Artemis Program) and addressing the growing problem of Climate Change. The former entails all manner of requirements, from launch vehicles and human-rated spacecraft to logistical concerns and payload services. The latter calls for advances in climate science, Earth observation, and high-quality data collection.
In the hunt for habitable worlds around other stars, planetary atmospheres provide fertile places to look. But, as a group of scientists at the Max-Planck Institute for Solar System Studies in Germany found, maybe astronomers should focus on a star’s metallicity, too. That’s because there seems to be a direct link between their metallicity, how much UV radiation they give off, and the atmospheres of rocky planets orbiting them. It turns out that metal-poor stars provide better conditions for life on their planets than metal-rich ones do.
The large impact craters dotting our planet are powerful reminders that asteroids and comets strike the Earth from time to time. As often said, it’s not a question of “if”; it’s a matter of “when” our planet will face an impending strike from space. But an impact is one existential threat humanity is finally starting to take seriously and wrap its head around.
The Hakuto-R lunar lander, currently in orbit around the Moon, just captured a beautiful “Earthrise”-like image, and one with an interesting side note. The Mission 1 lander, from the Tokyo-based commercial company ispace, took the image during the time of the April 20 solar eclipse, where totality was visible in Australia; and so the photo includes a perfect view of the shadow of the Moon passing above the Land Down Under.
NASA recently announced the astronauts that will make up the Artemis II crew. This mission will see the four-person crew conduct a circumlunar flight, similar to what the uncrewed Artemis I mission performed, and return to Earth. This mission will pave the way for the long-awaited return to the Moon in 2025, where four astronauts will fly to the Moon, and two (“the first woman and first person of color“) will land on the surface using the Starship HLS. These missions are part of NASA’s plan to establish a program of “sustained lunar exploration and development.”
Our galaxy’s largest nearby companion is the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a dwarf galaxy visible to the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere. In recent years, new theoretical research and better observational capabilities have taught astronomers a great deal about our (not-so-little) neighbour. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the LMC is helping shape the Milky Way’s evolution.
The head of the Pentagon office that is reviewing reported unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP – commonly known as UFOs, unidentified flying objects) told the US Congress this week that his office is now reviewing more than 650 incidents, but so far, none exhibited anything that was evidence of extraterrestrial activity or defied the known laws of physics.
The European Space Agency’s (ESA) recently launched Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission and NASA’s upcoming Europa Clipper mission could allow scientists to image landslides on the icy moons of Europa and Ganymede due to potential moonquakes on these small worlds. This comes after a recent study examined fault scarps on Europa and Ganymede orbiting Jupiter and Enceladus and Dione orbiting Saturn with the goal of drawing a connection between tectonic activity (quakes) and observed mass wasting (landslides) on these surfaces. The researchers “consider whether such smooth material can be generated by mass wasting triggered from local seismic shaking”, according to the study.
Earth is a favorite target for the cameras and astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS). This week, NASA shared an amazing picture of the Himalayan mountain range as seen from space. This jagged set of mountains stretches out across Asia above the Indian subcontinent and is home to Mount Everest, the tallest mountain on Earth. It’s centered in the image.
The Ingenuity chopper on Mars is the little helicopter that just keeps on going. It’s doing that, even as it takes on flights over some pretty tough ground on the Red Planet. On April 13, Ingenuity made its 50th flight of the mission, 45 more than it was originally scheduled to do.
It’s the end of an era, at least for the Perseverance rover on Mars, who has lost a long-time friend.
On April 10th, ESA’s Solar Orbiter made its closest flyby of the Sun, coming to within just 29% of the distance from the Earth to the Sun. From this vantage point, the spacecraft is performing close-up studies of our Sun and inner heliosphere. This is basically uncharted territory, as we’ve never had a spacecraft this close to the Sun.
The ESA’s Gaia mission is our most accurate star-measuring spacecraft. It’s busy mapping the positions and radial velocities of one billion stars in the Milky Way. The mission’s goal is to create a representative map of the galaxy’s stellar population with unprecedented accuracy. The mission has released 3 sets of data since its inception, leading to many discoveries.
There’s a wobbly X-ray-bright binary object in our galaxy called Hercules X-1 that’s blowing a mighty wind off to surrounding space. The system consists of a neutron star paired with a sun-like star. The neutron star is drawing material away from its companion. Its resulting accretion spins rapidly, and that whips up powerful winds. They affect the region of nearby space. That’s eerily similar to how a quasar’s central black hole sends out winds to influence its entire host galaxy.
Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are cosmic mysteries that are slowly but surely revealing their secrets. These bright flashes of light are visible in the radio wave part of the spectrum and usually last only a few milliseconds before fading away forever. They come from random locations across the Universe and are so powerful that we can see them emanating from billions of light-years away.
Amateur astrophotography is becoming increasingly popular among the astronomy community, as advancements in telescope and camera technologies allow individuals from all walks of life to observe the heavens in mind-blowing detail, including our own Sun, albeit with the proper protective equipment. This was recently demonstrated by Andrew McCarthy (Twitter @AJamesMcCarthy), who owns and operates Cosmic Background Studios, and is originally from Northern California but currently resides in Florence, Arizona.
In astronomy, we speak casually of extremely large numbers and extremely vast distances as if they’re trivial. A supermassive black hole can have several billion solar masses, a distant quasar is 500 million light-years away, etc. Objects like galaxies that are mere tens of millions of light years away start to seem familiar.
Located about 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus resides one of the best-studied cosmological objects known as the Crab Nebula (aka. Messier 1). Originally discovered in the 18th century by English astronomer John Bevis in 1731, the Crab Nebula became the first object included by astronomer Charles Messier in his catalog of Deep Sky Objects. Because of its extreme nature, scientists have been studying the Crab Nebula for decades to learn more about its magnetic field, its high-energy emissions (x-rays), and how these accelerate particles to close to the speed of light.
As the European Space Agency’s Juice spacecraft headed out on an eight-year trip to Jupiter’s icy moons, it turned back to snap some selfies with Earth in the background — and those awesome shots are just the start.
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