If you want to understand where our Universe came from and where it’s going, you need to measure how it’s expanding. If everything is moving away from everything else, we can extrapolate in either direction to figure out both our past and our future. Go backwards, and things will get denser, hotter, and less clumpy. […]
Back to the Spectacular Firestorm of Star Birth at the Beginning of the Universe: Probing the First Galaxies With Webb
Artist’s concept of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, and Northrop Grumman Deep-sky survey seeks to answer some of astronomy’s most pressing questions. When our universe was very young, it was a dark place filled with a neutral and opaque gas. How that gas became transparent is something that scientists have been trying […]
Astronomers spot amazing six-star system with three sets of eclipses
By Jonathan O’Callaghan Illustration of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, which spotted the star systemNASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Astronomers have spotted a bizarre star system in which six stars orbit and eclipse each other when viewed from our solar system. Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which is designed primarily to […]
Space challenges for President Biden: Four issues for the next four years
As Joe Biden begins the first year of his presidency, there is still much we don’t know about where he and his vice president, Kamala Harris, stand on major issues in civil and national security space. The pandemic and economic recovery are sure to drive Biden’s initial agenda. There are, nonetheless, several key space issues […]
FRB 20180916B Bursts Back Onto the Scene at the Lowest Frequencies to Date
Title: Chromatic periodic activity down to 120 MHz in a Fast Radio Burst Authors: Inés Pastor-Marazuela, Liam Connor, Joeri van Leeuwen, Yogesh Maan, Sander ter Veen, Anna Bilous, Leon Oostrum, Emily Petroff, Samayra Straal, Dany Vohl, Jisk Attema, Oliver M. Boersma, Eric Kooistra, Daniel van der Schuur, Alessio Sclocco, Roy Smits, Elizabeth A. K. Adams, Björn Adebahr, Willem J.G. de Blok, Arthur H. W. M. Coolen, Sieds Damstra, Helga Dénes, Kelley M. Hess, Thijs van der Hulst, Boudewijn Hut, V. […]
Astronomers Have Created the Largest Ever Map of the Sky, Comprising Over a Billion Galaxies
A group of galaxies nicknamed the Copeland Septet, in the constellation of Leo. Astronomers using images from Kitt Peak National Observatory and Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory have created the largest ever map of the sky, comprising over a billion galaxies. The final data release from the ambitious DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys sets the stage for […]
Hubble helps astronomers wind back clock on supernova blast
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 […]
Missing: One Black Hole With 10 Billion Solar Masses
Two of the knots, they concluded, were probably small galaxies with small internal motions being cannibalized by the big galaxy. Measurements of the third knot had such large error bars that it could not yet be ruled in or out as the black hole’s location. The fourth, very compact knot near the bottom edge of […]
Why The Recent Signal That Appeared to Come From Proxima Centauri Almost Certainly Didn't
On April 29, 2019, the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia began listing to the radio signals from the Sun’s nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri, just over 4 lightyears away. The telescope was looking for evidence of solar flares and so listened for 30 minutes before retraining on a distant quasar to recalibrate and then pointing back. […]
The Great Orion Nebula Is Even Greater Than You Know
Shining brilliantly in January’s skies is the Great Orion Nebula. By 10 PM every night in January from the Northern Hemisphere, Orion will be high and brilliant in the sky. While the belt points towards the Hyades and Pleides in one direction and back down towards Sirius in the other, the great Orion Nebula itself, […]