“We knew that the first direct image of a black hole would be groundbreaking,” said Kazuhiro Hada of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, a co-author of a new study…
Category: Astronomy
NASA’s NICER Finds X-ray Boosts in the Crab Pulsar’s Radio Bursts
“Out of more than 2,800 pulsars cataloged, the Crab pulsar is one of only a few that emit giant radio pulses, which occur sporadically and can be hundreds to thousands…
Stellar eggs near galactic center hatching into baby stars
Astronomers found a number of stellar eggs containing baby stars around the center of the Milky Way using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Previous studies had suggested that the…
Vision of a Stellar Ending
The light from this supernova first reached Earth from the direction of the constellation Cassiopeia around 1667 A.D. If anyone alive at the time saw it, they left no records.…
Peering into a Galaxy’s Dusty Core to Study an Active Supermassive Black Hole
What, precisely, is happening at its core to cause all this activity? Upcoming observations led by Nora Lützgendorf and Macarena García Marín of the European Space Agency using NASA’s James…
NASA’s Juno Reveals Dark Origins of One of Jupiter’s Grand Light Shows
Researchers found dawn storms are born on the nightside of the gas giant. As the planet rotates, the soon-to-be dawn storm rotates with it into the dayside, where these complex…
Serendipitous Juno Spacecraft Detections Shatter Ideas About Origin of Zodiacal Light
From NASA Look up to the night sky just before dawn, or after dusk, and you might see a faint column of light extending up from the horizon. That luminous…
Comet Makes a Pit Stop Near Jupiter’s Asteroids
Hawaii’s Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescopes located on the extinct volcanoes, one on Mauna Kea and one on Haleakala. Japanese amateur astronomer Seiichi Yoshida tipped off the Hubble…
Rare Blast’s Remains Discovered in Milky Way Center
From NASA Feb 8, 2021 Back to Gallery Astronomers may have found our galaxy’s first example of an unusual kind of stellar explosion. This discovery, made with NASA’s Chandra X-ray…
Unique Solar System Views from NASA Sun-Studying Missions
Using instruments that look not at the Sun itself, but at the constant outflow of solar material from the Sun, the missions — ESA and NASA’s Solar Orbiter, NASA’s Parker…
Magnetic ‘Highway’ Channels Material Out of Cigar Galaxy
Located 12 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major, the Cigar galaxy is undergoing an exceptionally high rate of star formation called a starburst. The star formation is…
Researchers Rewind the Clock to Calculate Age and Site of Supernova Blast
Astronomers are winding back the clock on the expanding remains of a nearby, exploded star. By using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, they retraced the speedy shrapnel from the blast to…
Roman Space Telescope Could Image 100 Hubble Ultra Deep Fields at Once
NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will be able to photograph an area of the sky at least 100 times larger than Hubble with the same crisp sharpness. Among…
Planetary Sleuthing Finds Triple-Star World
Now, after a lengthy hunt that spanned many years and many telescopes, Ciardi said he has “resurrected KOI-5Ab from the dead.” Thanks to new observations from NASA’s second planet-hunting mission,…
Chandra Studies Extraordinary Magnetar
In 2020, astronomers added a new member to an exclusive family of exotic objects with the discovery of a magnetar. New observations from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory help support the…
Shaping a Spiral Galaxy
The magnetic fields align along the entire length of the massive spiral arms — 24,000 light years across (0.8 kiloparsecs) — implying that the gravitational forces that created the galaxy’s…
On the Hunt for a Missing Giant Black Hole
Despite searching with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have no evidence that a distant black hole estimated to weigh between 3 billion and 100 billion times…
A blazar in the early universe
The supersharp radio “vision” of the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) has revealed previously unseen details in a jet of material ejected at three-quarters the speed of…
Viewing the ‘Star of Bethlehem’ tonight – the Great Jupiter-Saturn Conjunction
Jupiter and Saturn are about to have their closest conjunction in modern history. Don’t miss this once-in-a-millennium event. In an event that hasn’t occurred in 800 years, Jupiter and Saturn…
Jupiter and Saturn are converging for a rare “Great Conjunction” on the day of the winter solstice – December 21st
This particular Jupiter/Saturn “great conjunction” is extremely rare because of how close the two planets will look to one another and how easy it will be to see. Often, the…
Using Milankovitch Cycles to create high-resolution astrochronologies
The remarkable stability of the 405 thousand year cycle, which is modulated by Jupiter and Venus, makes it the Milankovitch Cycle of choice to construct astrochronologies.
New Climate Theory – Jupiter Herding Micrometeors Towards Earth?
New theory suggests Earth’s 60‐Year climate cycle may be driven by planetary oscillations directing micrometeors toward Earth, creating more dust – which change cloud cover. A paper published in Geophysical…
Claim: The USA’s Largest Radio Observatory is on the Verge of Structural Collapse
According to The Register, after two recent cable failures the 900 ton platform suspended above the gigantic Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico is literally hanging by a thread. Fraying…
“We need to change”: Astronomers Admit Their Outsized Contribution to the Climate Crisis
All those long flights to remote observatories ensure Astronomers have an outsized carbon footprint. And Astronomers keen to reduce their carbon footprints are being advised to abandon software languages like…
