Space and astronomy news
Even with all we’ve learned about Mars in recent decades, the planet is still mysterious. Most of the mystery revolves around life and whether the planet ever supported any. But the planet teases us with more foundational mysteries, too.
One of those mysteries is the Martian dichotomy: Why are the planet’s northern and southern hemispheres so different?
Continue reading “A Marsquake Reveals Why Mars has Two Very Different Hemispheres”
There might be a type of exoplanet without dry land. They’re called “Hycean” worlds, a portmanteau of ‘hydrogen’ and ‘ocean.’ They’re mostly or entirely covered in oceans and have thick hydrogen atmospheres.
They’re intriguing because their atmospheres keep them warm enough to have liquid water outside of the traditional habitable zones. If they do exist, scientists think they’re good candidates to support microbial life.
Continue reading “Could Ocean Worlds Support Life?”
A spacecraft takes between about seven and nine months to reach Mars. The time depends on the spacecraft and the distance between the two planets, which changes as they follow their orbits around the Sun. NASA’s Perseverance is the most recent spacecraft to make the journey, and it took about seven months.
If it didn’t take so long, then Mars would be within reach of a human mission sooner rather than later. NASA is exploring the idea of using nuclear electric propulsion to shorten the travel time.
Continue reading “Getting To Mars Quickly With Nuclear Electric Propulsion”
Orion the Hunter, resplendent in the northern hemisphere’s night sky in winter, is more than an easily identified constellation. It’s home to the Orion Nebula, the nearest star-forming region to Earth. It’s a mere 1,500 light-years away and can be seen with the naked eye below the three stars that form Orion’s belt.
New Hubble images show how young, newly-formed stars in the Orion Nebula are altering their environments.
Continue reading “Hubble Shows Young Stars Shaping Their Surroundings in the Orion Nebula”
The space debris problem won’t solve itself. We’ve been kicking the can down the road for years as we continue launching more rockets and payloads into space. In the last couple of years, organizations—especially the European Space Association—have begun to address the problem more seriously.
Now they’re asking this question: What will it take to reach zero space debris?
Continue reading “What Will It Take To Reach Zero Space Debris?”
Gas is the stuff of star formation, and most galaxies have enough gas in their budget to form some stars. However, the picture is a little different for dwarf galaxies. They lack the mass required to hold onto their gas when more massive neighbouring galaxies are siphoning it off.
New research shows that even isolated dwarf galaxies with no overbearing galactic neighbours struggle to form stars. What’s going on?
Continue reading “The Star-Forming Party Ended Early in Isolated Dwarf Galaxies”
What came first, galaxies or planets? The answer has always been galaxies, but new research is changing that idea.
Could habitable planets really have formed before there were galaxies?
Continue reading “Habitable Worlds Could Have Formed Before the First Galaxies”
The Andromeda galaxy is our closest galactic neighbour, barring dwarf galaxies that are gravitationally bound to the Milky Way. When conditions are right, we can see it with the naked eye, though it appears as a grey smudge. It’s the furthest object in the Universe that we can see without telescopic help.
The Hubble Space Telescope has created a massive 2.5-gigapixel panorama of Andromeda. It took 10 years and more than 1,000 orbits to capture all of the images.
Continue reading “Hubble Takes a 2.5 Gigapixel Image of Andromeda”
Six or seven billion years ago, most stars formed in super star clusters. That type of star formation has largely died out now. Astronomers know of two of these SSCs in the modern Milky Way and one in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), and all three of them are millions of years old.
New JWST observations have found another SSC forming in the LMC, and it’s only 100,000 years old. What can astronomers learn from it?
Continue reading “Astronomers are Watching a Newly Forming Super Star Cluster”
The Central Molecular Zone (CMZ) at the heart of the Milky Way holds a lot of gas. It contains about 60 million solar masses of molecular gas in complexes of giant molecular clouds (GMCs), structures where stars usually form. Because of the presence of Sag. A*, the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole (SMBH), the CMZ is an extreme environment. The gas in the CMZ is ten times more dense, turbulent, and heated than gas elsewhere in the galaxy.
How do star-forming GMCs behave in such an extreme environment?
Continue reading “Sticks and Stones: The Molecular Clouds in the Heart of the Milky Way”