Space and astronomy news
Along with all of their space-exploration, planet-hunting, and astronomy-based endeavours, NASA also keeps a very keen eye on Earth. In fact, they have 18 satellites whose job it is to look only at Earth. And those 18 advanced satellites are helping us understand Earth in unprecedented scientific detail.
And they take pretty pictures, too.
Continue reading “North and South America, At Night”
By the time a rocket actually launches, it’s components have been through a ton of rigorous testing. That’s certainly true of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) which is the most powerful rocket ever built. That’s right, something is finally going to surpass the Saturn V, the rocket that took Apollo astronauts to the Moon.
Continue reading “Watch NASA Test an SLS Tank to Destruction”
There’s a lot of mysterious goings-on at the center of the Milky Way. The supermassive black hole that resides there is chief among them. But there’s another intriguing puzzle there: an unexpected spherical region of intense gamma ray emissions.
A new study suggests that dark matter could be behind those emissions.
Continue reading “Dark Matter Could Be A Source of Gamma Rays Coming from the Center of the Milky Way”
While working at the NASA Johnson Space Center during the 1970s, astrophysicist Donald Kessler predicted that collisions between space debris would become increasingly common as the density of space debris increases in orbit around the Earth – creating a cascading effect. Since 2005, the amount of debris in orbit has followed an exponential growth curve, confirming Kessler’s prediction.
Given that the problem is only going to get worse in the coming years, there is a growing demand for technologies that can remove space debris. Following a competitive process, the ESA recently contracted the Swiss startup ClearSpace Today to create the world’s first debris-removing space mission. This mission, known as ClearSpace-1, is expected to launch by 2025 and will help pave the way for more debris removal missions.
Continue reading “An Upcoming ESA Mission is Going to Remove one Piece of Space Junk From Orbit”
This week’s Carnival of Space is hosted by me at the CosmoQuest blog.
Click here to read Carnival of Space #641
Continue reading “Carnival of Space #641”
Spiral galaxies are an iconic form. They’re used in product logos and all sorts of other places. We even live in one. And though it may seem kind of obvious how they get their shape, by rotating, that’s not the case.
Continue reading “How Spiral Galaxies Get Their Shape”
Meade Instruments, a company familiar to any backyard astronomer who’s drooled over their telescopes, has filed for bankruptcy. The company has fallen on hard times in recent years, as they’ve faced increasing competition. Meade also recently lost a lawsuit, which pushed them over the edge into bankruptcy.
The company is based in Irvine, California, and was founded in 1972. They started out selling small refracting telescopes. They expanded into Newtonian reflectors and Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes over the years. Now, they sell telescope models worth upwards of $10,000.
Continue reading “Wow, Meade Instruments Just Filed for Bankruptcy Protection”
When stars die, they don’t die quietly but prefer to go out with a bang! This is known as a supernova, which occurs when a star has expended all of its fuel and undergoes gravitational collapse. In the process, the outer layers of the star will be blown off in a massive explosion visible from billions of light-years away. For decades, NASA has been monitoring galaxies beyond the Milky Way and detected numerous supernova taking place.
For instance, over the past 20 years, the Hubble Space Telescope has been monitoring the galaxy NGC 5468 – an intermediate spiral galaxy located roughly 130 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. In that time, this galaxy has experienced 5 supernovae and, thanks to its orientation (perpendicular to our own), astronomers have been able to study this galaxy and its supernovae in glorious detail.
Continue reading “This Galaxy Has Been Home to 5 Supernovae in the Last 20 Years”
We’ve all heard this one: when you drink a glass of water, that water has already been through a bunch of other people’s digestive tracts. Maybe Attila the Hun’s or Vlad the Impaler’s; maybe even a Tyrannosaurus Rex’s.
Well, the same thing is true of stars and matter. All the matter we see around us here on Earth, even our own bodies, has gone through at least one cycle of stellar birth and death, maybe more. But which type of star?
That’s what a team of researchers at ETH Zurich (Ecole polytechnique federale de Zurich) wanted to know.
Continue reading “We Know We’re Made of Stardust. But Did it Come From Red Giants?”Hosts: Fraser Cain (universetoday.com / @fcain)
Dr. Morgan Rehnberg (MorganRehnberg.com / @MorganRehnberg & ChartYourWorld.org)
Dave Dickinson (www.astroguyz.com / @astroguyz)
Carolyn Collins Petersen (TheSpaceWriter.com / @spacewriter)
Moiya McTier (https://www.moiyamctier.com/ / @GoAstroMo)
Continue reading “Weekly Space Hangout: December 11, 2019 – Charlie Duke and Tom O’Conner from Astrograms”