Carolyn Collins Petersen, Author at Universe Today

August 4, 2023August 4, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Yes! A JWST Image of the Ring Nebula

JWST/NIRcam composite image of the Ring Nebula. The images clearly show the main ring, surrounded by a faint halo and with many delicate structures. The interior of the ring is filled with hot gas. The star which ejected all this material is visible at the very center. Courtesy JWST/University of Manchester.

Brace yourselves for great JWST views of the iconic Ring Nebula (M57). An international team of astronomers just released a fantastic near-infrared image of the nebula, showing incredible details.

August 1, 2023August 1, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Tether a Sunshade to an Asteroid to Slow Down Climate Change

Could a solar-sail-like structure (or structures) tethered to an asteroid provide a sunshade for Earth to block sunlight and mitigate climate change? A recent study looks into it. Courtesy NASA.

It probably comes as no surprise to people suffering through drastic weather this year that our planet is heating up. Climate change is the culprit and researchers continue to look for ways to mitigate its effects. A scientist at the University of Hawai’i suggests a novel approach: create a giant solar shade in space to block enough sunlight to counter climate change.

July 31, 2023August 1, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Oops. NASA Accidentally Points Voyager 2’s Antenna Away from Earth, Temporarily Losing Contact

An artist concept depicting one of NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft, humanity's farthest and longest-lived spacecraft. Voyager 2 just lost contact with Earth while Voyager 1 is still reporting back. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

It’s every space mission’s nightmare: losing contact with the spacecraft. In the best case, you recover it right away. Worst case, you never hear from your hardware again. On July 21, controllers lost contact with Voyager 2, out in the depths of space. Now they’re waiting for a reset to catch Voyager 2’s next message when it “phones home”. (Update: on August 2, NASA announced via its Twitter account that it has received a “heartbeat” carrier signal from the spacecraft.)

July 29, 2023July 29, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Astronomers are Watching a Planet Get its Atmosphere Blasted Away into Space

This artist's illustration shows a planet (dark silhouette) passing in front of the red dwarf star AU Microscopii. The planet is so close to the eruptive star a ferocious blast of stellar wind and blistering ultraviolet radiation is heating the planet's hydrogen atmosphere, causing it to escape into space. The illustration is based on measurements made by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credits: NASA, ESA, and Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

What do you get when a hot young world orbits a wildly unstable young red dwarf? For AU Microsopii b, the answer is: flares from the star tearing away the atmosphere. That catastrophic loss happens in fits and starts, “hiccuping” out its atmosphere at one point and then losing practically none the next.

July 28, 2023July 28, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

JWST Pierces Through a Thick Nebula to Reveal Newly Forming Binary Stars

The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured a high-resolution image of a tightly bound pair of actively forming binary stars, known as Herbig-Haro 46/47, in near-infrared light. NASA, ESA, CSA, J. DePasquale (STScI), CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

In 1985, the physicist Heinz Pagels wrote that star birth was a “veiled and secret event.” That’s because the stellar crêches hide the action. But, ever since the advent of infrared astronomy, astronomers have been able to lift that veil. In particular, the Hubble Space Telescope has studied these systems and now, the Webb Telescope (JWST) gives regular detailed views of stellar nurseries.

July 28, 2023July 28, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

How Did Supermassive Black Holes Grow So Quickly, So Early?

An international team of astronomers using archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and other space- and ground-based observatories have discovered a unique object in the distant, early Universe that is a crucial link between young star-forming galaxies and the earliest supermassive black holes. Current theories predict that supermassive black holes begin their lives in the dust-shrouded cores of vigorously star-forming “starburst” galaxies.

Supermassive black holes haunt the cores of many galaxies. Yet for all we know about black holes (not nearly enough!), the big ones remain a mystery, particularly when they began forming. Interestingly, astronomers see them in the early epochs of cosmic history. That raises the question: how did they get so big when the Universe was still just a baby?

July 27, 2023July 27, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Astronomers Find a Rare “Einstein Cross”

A great example of an Einstein Cross, as seen by Hubble Space Telescope. A "galaxy" with five nuclei is really one galaxy surrounded by a mirage of four images of a distant quasar. The galaxy lies 400 million light years away; the quasar about 8 billion. Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble

Gravitational lensing is one of astronomy’s great wonders: a natural lens that magnifies the distant universe. Sometimes a lensing system takes the shape of a so-called “Einstein Cross”. Those are rare and amazingly useful ways to study objects far away in space and time.

July 24, 2023July 24, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

A New Technique Lets Us Learn What the Milky Way’s Arms Are Made Of

A chemical map of the Milky Way Galaxy superimposed over a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory illustration of the Milky Way. Red and blue spots indicate objects with a high or low metallicity, respectively. High metallicity (red) corresponds to the presence of young stars, which are more abundant in spiral arms. Credit: K. Hawkins (UT Austin), NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC/Caltech).

We’re all used to seeing maps of the Milky Way rich with stars and nebulae. But, there are regions we can’t see or map using conventional methods. There’s no way to get outside the Galaxy to take pictures of the whole shebang.

July 23, 2023July 23, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

An Enormous Cosmological Simulation Wraps Up, Recreating Even More of the Universe

In shaping the Universe, gravity builds a vast cobweb-like structure of filaments tying galaxies and clusters of galaxies together along invisible bridges hundreds of millions of light-years long. This is known as the cosmic web. Dark matter plays a role in the distribution of all this matter. Credit: Volker Springel (Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics) et al. — In shaping the Universe, gravity builds a vast cobweb-like structure of filaments tying galaxies and clusters of galaxies together along invisible bridges hundreds of millions of light-years long. This is known as the cosmic web. Dark matter plays a role in the distribution of all this matter. Cosmologists simulate the early universe to understand how it unfolded. Credit: Volker Springel (Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics) et al.

There’s an old joke among astronomy students about a question on the final exam for a cosmology class. It goes like this: “Describe the Universe and give three examples.” Well, a team of researchers in Germany, the U.S., and the UK took a giant leap toward giving at least one accurate example of the Universe.

July 21, 2023July 21, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Record-Breaking Magnetar was There in the Data All Along

An artist’s impression of the ultra-long period magnetar—a rare type of star with extremely strong magnetic fields that can produce powerful bursts of energy. Credit: ICRAR

The cosmic zoo has strange beasts that astronomers stumble across in the most fascinating ways. Not long ago a team in Australia found a highly unusual magnetar, one of the weirder denizens of the starry zoo. It’s called GPM J1839-10 and it lies some 15,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Scutum.