Cloud Layers at WASP-127b
A ‘hot Saturn’ with a difference, that’s WASP-127b. Although it’s 525 light years away, we’ve learned a surprising amount about the planet’s atmosphere. Details come via the ongoing Europlanet Science Congress 2021, now being held virtually for pandemic reasons, at which Romain Allart (iREx/Université de Montréal and Université de Genève) spoke this week. WASP-127b is […]
Hubble Reveals the Final Stages of a Dying Star
In April 2021 Hubble released its 31st-anniversary image. It’s a portrait of AG Carinae, one of the most luminous stars in the entire Milky Way. AG Carinae is in a reckless struggle with itself, periodically ejecting matter until it reaches stability sometime in the future. Thanks to the Hubble, we get to watch the brilliant […]
Keeping an Eye on Psyche
What makes the asteroid 16 Psyche interesting is that it may well be the exposed core of a planet from the early days of Solar System formation, a nickel-iron conglomeration that normally would lie well below a surface mantle and crust. It’s also an M-class asteroid, a category of which it is the largest known […]
The 900-year-old mystery of the missing supernova has finally been solved
A 900-year-old galactic mystery has been solved! The cold case of The Star That Appeared in the Night But Then Disappeared Without a Trace may finally have found its perp. The story begins in 1181 CE. On August 6, Chinese and Japanese astronomers saw a “new” star in the sky, what they called a “Guest […]
NASA has a Ballistic air gun to Hurl Rocks at Space Suits to Test Their Micrometeorite Protection
Shock testing is commonly used throughout engineering to determine how a product will do when impacted by something. That something could be anything from the ground to a cruise missile. Like so much else in space exploration, engineers at NASA are performing the same type of test, just scaled up. Instead of simply dropping the […]
How is an intermediate mass black hole like the Cookie monster? They’re both really sloppy eaters
If you had to wager on a star vs. a black hole, you’d bet on the black hole to win every time. But how it wins tells us a lot about it. Your standard-issue stellar mass black hole (one with, say, 5 to 100 times the mass of the mass of the Sun) would tidily […]
Moon’s Tycho Crater Revealed in Intricate Detail – Powerful New Radar Technology Will Reveal Secrets of the Solar System
Partially processed view of the Tycho Crater at a resolution of nearly five meters by five meters and containing approximately 1.4 billion pixels, taken during a radar project by Green Bank Observatory, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, and Raytheon Intelligence & Space using the Green Bank Telescope and antennas in the Very Long Baseline Array. This […]
NASA Announces Moon Landing Site for VIPER Mission
An artist’s conception shows VIPER drilling on the Moon. NASA / Daniel Rutter The U.S. is about to return to the Moon in a big way. NASA has announced one of the first steps in the next generation of lunar exploration: a landing site for the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER). The site is […]
A LEGO® Version of the Very Large Telescope. It Even has a Laser Interferometer
Interferometers are some of the most highly advanced sensor instruments that humans have made. They are used in everything from astronomy to quantum mechanics and have profoundly impacted our understanding of science. But not all interferometers have to be functional. A Dutch astronomer named Frans Snik has just designed one that, while it isn’t function, […]
Planets, Planets Everywhere (Not Just Where You’d Think)
Editor’s note: AAS Nova is on vacation until 22 September. Normal posting will resume at that time; in the meantime, we’ll be taking this opportunity to look at a few interesting AAS journal articles that have recently been in the news or drawn attention. A diagram of how planets are detected via gravitational microlensing. The detectable planet is in […]