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…
Category: Astronomy
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…
A beautiful Moon-Mars conjunction tonight
Skywatchers, don’t miss this event. Tonight, Oct. 2nd, the Harvest Moon and Mars are in conjunction, less than 1 degree apart for sky observers. The Moon is nearly full, and bright red Mars is only…
A second alignment plane of the solar system has been discovered
Comet orbits revealed something previously unknown – a mirror ecliptic inclined opposite of the planetary ecliptic. From the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan A study of comet motions indicates that…
First-ever planet may have been found in another galaxy
First Candidate for a Planet in an External Galaxy In a surprise paper, a team of researchers from the U.S. and China has found the first evidence for a candidate…
Holding up a mirror to a dark matter discrepancy
Dark matter does not emit, absorb, or reflect light. It does not interact with any known particles. Its presence is known only through its gravitational pull on visible matter in…
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