The mystery of how early universe supermassive black holes grew so quickly may be solved, with the James Webb Space Telescope finding the first evidence of "heavy seeds."
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The Dark Energy Camera has imaged a ghostly hand claw reaching out to grab a distant galaxy. There's nothing supernatural about this structure known as "God's Hand," but it's awe-inspiring nonetheless.
Disney+ releases a new trailer for its upcoming series "Star Wars: The Acolyte" that delves into the High Republic era and seems to depict a deep awakening of the Sith.
Astrophotographer Miguel Claro explains how taking a high resolution solar image like this one represents an enormous amount of personal and professional effort and months of planning.
To launch Black Hole Week, NASA released this new Hubble image of spiral galaxy NGC 4951.
Astronomers will be alerted to gravitational waves faster than ever before as LIGO and other detectors "listen" to a universal symphony.
Is GRB 191019A a typical burst of gamma rays from a dying star, an anomalously long burst from colliding objects, or something else entirely?
The post Is This Gamma-Ray Burst a Shredded Star in Disguise? appeared first on Sky & Telescope.
The new moon of May 2024 will see the bright constellations of summer begin to rise just as those of winter sink below the horizon.
The Sun is increasing its intensity on schedule, continuing its approach to solar maximum. In just over a 24-hour period on May 5 and May 6, 2024, the Sun released three X-class solar flares measuring at X1.3, X1.2, and X4.5. Solar flares can impact radio communications and electric power grids here on Earth, and they also pose a risk to spacecraft and astronauts in space.
NASA released an animation that shows the solar flares blasting off the surface of the rotating Sun, below.
NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured these images of the solar flares — as seen in the bright flashes in the upper right — on May 5 and May 6, 2024. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares and which is colorized in teal. Credit: NASA/SDOPredicting when solar maximum will occur is not easy and the timing of it can only be confirmed after it happens. But NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) currently estimates that solar maximum will likely occur between May 2024 and early 2026. The Sun goes through a cycle of high and low activity approximately every 11 years, driven by the Sun’s magnetic field and indicated by the frequency and intensity of sunspots and other activity on the surface. The SWPC has been working hard to have a better handle on predicting solar cycles and activity. Find out more about that here.
Solar flares are explosions on the Sun that release powerful bursts of energy and radiation coming from the magnetic energy associated with the sunspots. The more sunspots, the greater potential for flares.
Flares are classified based on a system similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes, which divides solar flares according to their strength. X-class is the most intense category of flares, while the smallest ones are A-class, followed by B, C, M and then X. Each letter represents a 10-fold increase in energy output. So an X is ten times an M and 100 times a C. The number that follows the letter provides more information about its strength. The higher the number, the stronger the flare.
Scientists fighting to save coral reefs amid the climate crisis suggest sending genetic coral material to be preserved on the moon. Is it a good idea?
A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket was fueled for launch May 6, 2024 for the Starliner Crew Test Flight. Image: NASA TV.
An Atlas 5 rocket carrying astronauts for the first time was fueled for blastoff Monday night to boost Boeing’s long-delayed Starliner crew ferry ship into orbit for its first piloted test flight. But trouble with a valve in the rocket’s upper stage forced mission managers to order a scrub just two hours before takeoff.
It was a frustrating disappointment for commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams, who were in the process of strapping in for launch when the scrub was announced. The moment brought to mind one of Wilmore’s favorite sayings: “you’d rather be on the ground wishing you were in space than in space and wishing you were on the ground.”
It was not immediately clear when Boeing and rocket-builder United Launch Alliance might be able to make another attempt, but engineers will first have to figure out what caused an oxygen relief valve in the rocket’s Centaur upper stage to “chatter” during the late stages of fueling and what might be required to fix it. If the valve has to be replaced, ULA might have to roll the rocket back to its processing facility for repairs.
Already running years behind schedule and more than a billion dollars over budget, the Starliner is Boeing’s answer to SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, an already operational spacecraft that has carried 50 astronauts, cosmonauts and civilians into orbit in 13 flights, 12 of them to the space station.
NASA funded development of both spacecraft to ensure the agency would be able to launch crews to the outpost even if one company’s ferry ship was grounded for any reason. While it’s taken Boeing much longer than expected to ready their ship for crew flights, all systems appeared go for launch from pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station at 10:34 p.m. EDT.
An issue with ULA's Atlas V rocket scrubbed the historic 1st crewed launch attempt of Boeing's Starliner capsule on May 6. May 10 is the earliest possible launch date now.
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.”
The case for Planet Nine (P9) goes back at least as far as 2016. In that year, astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin published evidence pointing to its existence. Along with colleagues, they’ve published other work supporting P9 since then.
There’s lots of evidence for the existence of P9, but none of it has reached the threshold of definitive proof. The main evidence concerns the orbits of Extreme Trans-Neptunian Objects (ETNOs). They exhibit a peculiar clustering that indicates a massive object. P9 might be shepherding these objects along on their orbits.
This orbital diagram shows Planet Nine (lime green colour, labelled “P9”) and several extreme trans-Neptunian objects. Each background square is 100 AU across. Image Credit: By Tomruen – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68955415The names Brown and Batygin, both Caltech astronomers, come up often in regard to P9. Now, they’ve published another paper along with colleagues Alessandro Morbidelli and David Nesvorny, presenting more evidence supporting P9.
It’s titled “Generation of Low-Inclination, Neptune-Crossing TNOs by Planet Nine.” It’s published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
What has one horn, two crewmates and shares a name with its ride into orbit? "Calypso," the plush sequined narwhal that is flying on the crew flight test of "Calypso," Boeing's CST-100 Starliner.
It’s that time again. NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts) has announced six concepts that will receive funding and proceed to the second phase of development. This is always an interesting look at the technologies and missions that could come to fruition in the future.
The six chosen ones will each receive $600,000 in funding to pursue the ideas for the next two years. NASA expects each team to use the two years to address both technical and budgetary hurdles for their concepts. When this second phase comes to an end, some of the concepts could advance to the third stage.
“These diverse, science fiction-like concepts represent a fantastic class of Phase II studies,” said John Nelson, NIAC program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Our NIAC fellows never cease to amaze and inspire, and this class definitely gives NASA a lot to think about in terms of what’s possible in the future.”
Here they are.
Fluidic Telescope (FLUTE): Enabling the Next Generation of Large Space Observatories
Two asteroids are expected to make close but safe approaches to Earth this week, and you can watch them live.
The video gives an insight into the energetic events that transfer energy and plasma into the solar corona that ultimately drives the solar wind.
NASA and Boeing are working together to send the first astronauts to space on Starliner on May 6. Among the Mission Control support team is Kennedy Space Center's chief engineer.
On Friday, May 3rd, the sixth mission in the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program (Chang’e-6) launched from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in southern China. Shortly after, China announced that the spacecraft separated successfully from its Long March 5 Y8 rocket. The mission, consisting of an orbiter and lander element, is now on its way to the Moon and will arrive there in a few weeks. By June, the lander element will touch down on the far side of the Moon, where it will gather about 2 kg (4.4 lbs) of rock and soil samples for return to Earth.
The mission launched four years after its predecessor, Chang’e-5, became China’s first sample-return mission to reach the Moon. It was also the first lunar sample return mission since the Soviet Luna 24 mission landed in Mare Crisium (the Sea of Crisis) in 1976. Compared to its predecessor, the Chang’e-6 mission weighs an additional 100 kg (220 lbs), making it the heaviest probe launched by the Chinese space program. The surface elements also face lesser-known terrain on the far side of the Moon and require a relay satellite for communications.
Speaking of surface elements, the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) has since released images showing how the mission also carries a rover element. This payload was not part of mission data disclosed by China before the flight. But as SpaceNews’ Andrew Jones pointed out, the rover can be seen in the CAST images (see above) integrated onto the side of the lander.
“Little is known about the rover, but a mention of a Chang’e-6 rover is made in a post from the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics (SIC) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS),” he wrote. “It suggests the small vehicle carries an infrared imaging spectrometer.” This rover is no doubt intended to assist the lander with investigating resources on the far side of the Moon. This is consistent with China’s long-term plans for building the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) around the southern polar region in collaboration with Roscosmos and other international patterns.
Similar to NASA’s plans for the Lunar Gateway and Artemis Base Camp, this requires that building sites be selected near sources of water ice and building materials (silica and other minerals). Ge Ping, the deputy director of the Center of Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering (CLESE) with the China National Space Administration (CNSA), related the importance of the sample-return mission to CGTN (a state-owned media company) before the launch:
Earth is the only life-supporting planet we know of, so it’s tempting to use it as a standard in the search for life elsewhere. But the modern Earth can’t serve as a basis for evaluating exoplanets and their potential to support life. Earth’s atmosphere has changed radically over its 4.5 billion years.
A better way is to determine what biomarkers were present in Earth’s atmosphere at different stages in its evolution and judge other planets on that basis.
That’s what a group of researchers from the UK and the USA did. Their research is titled “The early Earth as an analogue for exoplanetary biogeochemistry,” and it appears in Reviews in Mineralogy. The lead author is Eva E. Stüeken, a PhD student at the School of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of St Andrews, UK.
When Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago, its atmosphere was nothing like it is today. At that time, the atmosphere and oceans were anoxic. About 2.4 billion years ago, free oxygen began to accumulate in the atmosphere during the Great Oxygenation Event, one of the defining periods in Earth’s history. But the oxygen came from life itself, meaning life was present when the Earth’s atmosphere was much different.
This isn’t the only example of how Earth’s atmosphere has changed over geological time. But it’s an instructive one and shows why searching for life means more than just searching for an atmosphere like modern Earth’s. If that’s the way we conducted the search, we’d miss worlds where photosynthesis hadn’t yet appeared.
