When a large star reaches the end of its life it runs out of fuel, collapses and explodes into a supernova. The explosion releases enormous amounts of energy and light, turning a luminous object that is small at a distance into a large glowing ball. Supernova temperatures have been modeled to reach 6,000 times higher …
Continue reading "A Red Supergiant Star Is Caught Going Explosively Supernova, A First"
Over the next three weeks-plus, the James Webb Space Telescope will play out an unfurling and deployment in deep space unlike anything this world has seen before. It took decades to perfect the observatory -- a segmented telescope on a heat shield the length of a tennis court that was squeezed for launch into a …
Continue reading "The Amazing Unfurling Of The James Webb Space Telescope"
For almost 30 years now, the Hubble Space Telescope has transformed how we see the cosmos. In terms of scientific output as well as making visible the splendors of the sky above us, the Hubble has been arguably the most consequential telescope ever to peer into space. To commemorate 30 years of Hubble science and …
Continue reading "Sparkling Gifts From the Hubble Space Telescope, Thirty Years Into Its Mission"
Candidate exoplanets as seen by TESS in a southern sky mosaic from 13 observing sectors. (NASA/MIT/TESS) NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has finished its one year full-sky observation of Southern sky and has found hundreds of candidate exoplanets and 29 confirmed planets. It is now maneuvering its array of wide-field telescopes and cameras to …
Four years ago, the International Astronomical Union organized a competition to give popular names to 14 stars and 31 exoplanets that orbit them. The event encouraged 570,000 people to vote and the iconic planet 51 Pegasi b became "Dimidium, " 55 Cancri b became "Galileo," and (among others) Formalhaut b became "Dagon." It remains unclear …
Continue reading "A Grand Global Competition to Name 100 ExoWorlds"
The Hubble Space Telescope, arguably the jewel in the crown of NASA's science missions, was launched 29 years ago. It has been providing scientists and the public with a steady stream of previously unimagined insights about the cosmos -- plus those jaw-dropping, very high-resolution images like the one above -- pretty much ever since. It …
Here's an image to fire your imagination: Fifteen thousand galaxies in one picture -- sources of light detectable today that were generated as much as 11 billion years ago. Of those 15,000 galaxies, some 12,000 are inferred to be in the process of forming stars. That's hardly surprising because the period around 11 billions years …
White dwarf stars, the remnant cores of low-mass stars that have exhausted all their nuclear fuel, are among the most dense objects in the sky. Their mass is comparable to that of the sun, while their volume is comparable to that of Earth. Very roughly, this means the average density of matter in a …
Continue reading "Of White Dwarfs, "Zombie" Stars and Supernovae Explosions"
An international team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has made the first complete millimeter-wavelength image of the ring of dusty debris surrounding the young star Fomalhaut. This well-defined band of rubble and gas is likely the result of comets smashing together near the outer edges of a planetary system 25 light-years from …
Continue reading "Elegant Image of Icy Disk Around The Young Fomalhaut System"
We live in a dangerous universe. We know about meteor and comets, about harmful radiation that could extinguish life without an electromagnetic shield, about major changes in climate that are both natural and man-made. There’s another risk out there that some scientists assert could cause large-scale extinctions even though it would occur scores of light-years …
Many Worlds 