Evan Gough, Author at Universe Today

March 15, 2019March 15, 2019 by Evan Gough

Do You See the “Cosmic Bat” in NGC 1788?

The Cosmic Bat in NGC 1788. Image Credit: ESO

2,000 light years away, in the Orion constellation, lurks an eerie looking creature, made of glowing gas lit up by young stars: the Cosmic Bat.

Its real name is NGC 1788. It’s a reflection nebula, meaning the light of nearby stars is strong enough to light it up, but not strong enough to ionize the gas, like in an emission nebula. Even though the stars are young and bright, the Cosmic Bat is still hidden. It took the powerful Very Large Telescope (VLT) to capture this image.

March 15, 2019March 15, 2019 by Evan Gough

This Star has been Kicked Out of the Milky Way. It Knows What It Did.

Researchers from the University of Michigan confirm that a runaway star was ejected from the Milky Way's disk rather than the galactic core. Image Credit: Kohei Hattori

Every once in a while, the Milky Way ejects a star. The evicted star is typically ejected from the chaotic area at the center of the galaxy, where our Super Massive Black Hole (SMBH) lives. But at least one of them was ejected from the comparatively calm galactic disk, a discovery that has astronomers rethinking this whole star ejection phenomenon.

March 14, 2019March 14, 2019 by Evan Gough

New Ring of Dust Discovered in the Inner Solar System

An illustration of the dust rings around the Sun. Image Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith

Discovering new things in space is a regular occurrence. Astronomers keep finding more distant objects in the outer reaches of the Solar System. Worlds like ‘The Goblin,’ ‘FarOut,’ and ‘FarFarOut‘ are stretching the limits of what our Solar System actually is.

But finding new things in the inner Solar System is rare.

March 14, 2019March 14, 2019 by Evan Gough

This is the Final Photograph from Opportunity

Opportunity's final image. Image Credit: NASA/JPL

Sad.

But beautiful.

NASA has shared Opportunity’s final photograph from the surface of Mars. The rover’s final resting place is in Endeavour Crater, and barring any statistically unlikely event, it will sit there for centuries, millennia, or even longer. And instead of a tombstone, we have this final image.

March 13, 2019March 13, 2019 by Evan Gough

This is What It’ll Look Like When the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies Collide Billions of Years from Now

Located in the constellation of Hercules, about 230 million light-years away, NGC 6052 is a pair of colliding galaxies. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Adamo et al.

What happens when two galaxies collide? The Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy are on a collision course, and in about 4.5 billion years, they will meet. Now astronomers using the Hubble have provided some visual insight into what that collision might look like.

March 13, 2019March 13, 2019 by Evan Gough

China’s Lunar Rover Wakes Up and Gets to Work for its 3rd Lunar Day

China's Yutu-2 rover captured this image of the lunar surface during its third lunar day. Image Credit: CLEP/CNSA

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) has released some new photos and updated the world on their lunar rover mission. The Yutu-2 rover is working its way into the history books on the lunar far side, exploring the Von Karman crater. It’s third lunar day is now in the record books.

March 12, 2019March 12, 2019 by Evan Gough

Jupiter or Earth? Which One’s Which, and Why Do They Look so Similar?

Though Jupiter and Earth are wildly differing places, some things are the same on both worlds. Image Credit: NASA

Jupiter: a massive, lifeless gas giant out there on the other side of the asteroid belt. It’s a behemoth, containing 2.5 times as much mass as all the other planets combined. To top it off, it’s named after the Roman God of War.

Earth: a tiny rocky world, almost too close to the Sun, where life rises and falls, punctuated repeatedly by extinctions. Compared to Jupiter, it’s a gum-drop world: Jupiter is 317.8 times the mass of Earth. And Earth is named after a goddess in German paganism, or so we think.

“Out of all the complexity flows beauty…”
Norman Kuring, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

March 12, 2019March 12, 2019 by Evan Gough

A Newer, More Accurate Measurement Sets the Mass of the Milky Way at 1.5 Trillion Solar Masses

An artist's illustration of the 44 globular clusters used to measure the mass of the Milky Way. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, L. Calçada

Astronomers keep trying to measure the mass of the Milky Way and they keep coming up with different numbers. But it’s not that they’re bad at math. Measuring the mass of something as enormous as the Milky Way is confounding. Plus, we’re embedded in it; it takes some very clever maneuvering to constrain its mass.

March 8, 2019March 8, 2019 by Evan Gough

It Took 10 Years to Confirm the First Planet Ever Found by Kepler

An illustration of the Kepler 1658 and Kepler 1658 b. Image Credit: Gabriel Perez Diaz/Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias

Even though astronomy people are fond of touting the number of exoplanets found by the Kepler spacecraft, those planets aren’t actually confirmed. They’re more correctly called candidate exoplanets, because the signals that show something’s out there, orbiting a distant star, can be caused by something other than exoplanets. It can actually take a long time to confirm their existence.

March 8, 2019March 8, 2019 by Evan Gough

Ho-Hum. More Boring Success for SpaceX as Crew Dragon Splashes Down

The SpaceX Crew Dragon about to splash down in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida. Image Credit: NASA/SpaceX

A few hours ago, the SpaceX Crew Dragon splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean, about 200 miles off the coast of Florida. The splashdown is the last act in what has been a successful first flight for the Crew Dragon. The flight, called Demo-1, was launched on March 2nd and spent five days at the International Space Station (ISS).