Featured Posts
SciTech Daily
20 Jan 2021, 15:13 UTC
For millennia humans have used maps to understand and navigate our world and put ourselves in context: we rely on maps to show us where we are, where we came from, and where we’re going. Astronomical maps continue this tradition on a vast scale.
Astronomers Have Created the Largest Ever Map of the Sky, Comprising Over a Billion Galaxies
20 Jan 2021, 15:13 UTC
For millennia humans have used maps to understand and navigate our world and put ourselves in context: we rely on maps to show us where we are, where we came from, and where we’re going. Astronomical maps continue this tradition on a vast scale.
Astronomy Now
19 Jan 2021, 16:36 UTC
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope to study a supernova remnant in the Small Magellanic Cloud have determined light from the blast reached Earth 1,700 years ago during the decline of the Roman Empire. While it would have been visible to inhabitants of the southern hemisphere, there are no known records of any observations. Located some 200,000 light years away, the remnant is known as 1E 0102.2-7219. As shown below, gaseous knots in the expanding cloud of debris that are headed in Earth’s general direction are shown in blue while those moving away appear read. The cloud is expanding at an average speed of 3.2 million kilometres per hour, or 2 million mph. By measuring the motions of 22 clumps of oxygen-rich clumps of debris, researchers were able to determine when the supernova must have occurred. Likewise, they estimated the collapsed neutron star created in the blast must be moving at more than 3 million kilometres per hour.
Hubble helps astronomers wind back clock on supernova blast
19 Jan 2021, 16:36 UTC
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope to study a supernova remnant in the Small Magellanic Cloud have determined light from the blast reached Earth 1,700 years ago during the decline of the Roman Empire. While it would have been visible to inhabitants of the southern hemisphere, there are no known records of any observations. Located some 200,000 light years away, the remnant is known as 1E 0102.2-7219. As shown below, gaseous knots in the expanding cloud of debris that are headed in Earth’s general direction are shown in blue while those moving away appear read. The cloud is expanding at an average speed of 3.2 million kilometres per hour, or 2 million mph. By measuring the motions of 22 clumps of oxygen-rich clumps of debris, researchers were able to determine when the supernova must have occurred. Likewise, they estimated the collapsed neutron star created in the blast must be moving at more than 3 million kilometres per hour.
Starts With a Bang!
18 Jan 2021, 15:03 UTC
If you thought it was just one rich region in space, look deeper and wider.
The Great Orion Nebula Is Even Greater Than You Know
18 Jan 2021, 15:03 UTC
If you thought it was just one rich region in space, look deeper and wider.
SPACE.com
18 Jan 2021, 09:37 UTC
Stars begin their lives when hydrogen fusion ignites in their dense, hot cores. Once that process starts, it's game on. The gravitational pull of all the mass of the star tries to squeeze it down into a tiny point, but the energy released by fusion pushes outward, creating a delicate balance that can persist for millions or even trillions of years.
How do stars die?
18 Jan 2021, 09:37 UTC
Stars begin their lives when hydrogen fusion ignites in their dense, hot cores. Once that process starts, it's game on. The gravitational pull of all the mass of the star tries to squeeze it down into a tiny point, but the energy released by fusion pushes outward, creating a delicate balance that can persist for millions or even trillions of years.
New Scientist
15 Jan 2021, 10:35 UTC
NASA’s “mole” on Mars has failed. After nearly two years of attempting to dig the InSight lander’s heat probe – nicknamed the mole – into the Red Planet’s surface, engineers have finally given up.
NASA gives up trying to burrow under Mars surface with 'mole' probe
15 Jan 2021, 10:35 UTC
NASA’s “mole” on Mars has failed. After nearly two years of attempting to dig the InSight lander’s heat probe – nicknamed the mole – into the Red Planet’s surface, engineers have finally given up.
Astronomy.com News
14 Jan 2021, 20:00 UTC
They lived fast, died young, and seeded the cosmos with material for future generations.
The Beginning to the End of the Universe: The first stars are born
14 Jan 2021, 20:00 UTC
They lived fast, died young, and seeded the cosmos with material for future generations.
Cosmosphere
14 Jan 2021, 09:51 UTC
IMAGE: Artist’s representation of the ID2299 galaxy. CREDIT: ESO/M. Kornmesser Maybe it’s not the year to talk about the death of a galaxy, but this next story intrigued me. Everything dies apparently, even galaxies. I mean, we talk about the heat death of the universe a lot, but I think this is the first time we’ve taken one step down from that. In new work presented in Nature Astronomy, researchers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to watch a galaxy eject a massive amount of its cold gas content. The galaxy is called ID2299, and it’s about 9 billion light-years away from us, and we’re seeing it when the universe was only 4.5 billion years old. Space-time is mind-boggling at this scale. Anyway, the gas is being ejected at a rate of 10000 Suns’ worth of mass every year, removing 46% of the total cold gas from the galaxy. And the galaxy is also undergoing extremely fast star formation, and calculations show that it will run out of gas in a few tens of million years. That’s very soon in astronomical terms. The image we’re sharing is an artist’s impression of the galaxy, and you may notice that one ...
ALMA Captures Distant Colliding Galaxy on Verge of ‘Dying’
14 Jan 2021, 09:51 UTC
IMAGE: Artist’s representation of the ID2299 galaxy. CREDIT: ESO/M. Kornmesser Maybe it’s not the year to talk about the death of a galaxy, but this next story intrigued me. Everything dies apparently, even galaxies. I mean, we talk about the heat death of the universe a lot, but I think this is the first time we’ve taken one step down from that. In new work presented in Nature Astronomy, researchers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to watch a galaxy eject a massive amount of its cold gas content. The galaxy is called ID2299, and it’s about 9 billion light-years away from us, and we’re seeing it when the universe was only 4.5 billion years old. Space-time is mind-boggling at this scale. Anyway, the gas is being ejected at a rate of 10000 Suns’ worth of mass every year, removing 46% of the total cold gas from the galaxy. And the galaxy is also undergoing extremely fast star formation, and calculations show that it will run out of gas in a few tens of million years. That’s very soon in astronomical terms. The image we’re sharing is an artist’s impression of the galaxy, and you may notice that one ...
Sky and Telescope
13 Jan 2021, 16:57 UTC
Astronomers have discovered three planets orbiting a star about 10 billion years old — one of them rocky. The star, TOI 561 (meaning it was the 561st object of interest from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite), is in our galaxy’s older thick disk, which means its planets have a nice view from on high of the Milky Way’s spiral.
