Evan Gough, Author at Universe Today

January 13, 2023January 13, 2023 by Evan Gough

One Day There Could be a Pipeline of Oxygen Flowing From the Moon’s South Pole

Graphic depiction of the Lunar South Pole Oxygen Pipeline. Credits: Peter Curreri

The Artemis program intends to put humans on the Moon for the first time since NASA’s Apollo missions. But Artemis has a larger scope than just landing people there, setting up some science experiments, gathering Moon rocks, playing a little golf, then leaving. The intent is to establish a consistent presence.

That will require resources, and one of those critical resources is oxygen.

January 13, 2023January 13, 2023 by Evan Gough

TESS has Found A Second Earth-Sized World in This System. Exoplanet Science is Maturing

Newly discovered Earth-size planet TOI 700 e orbits within the habitable zone of its star in this illustration. Its Earth-size sibling, TOI 700 d, can be seen in the distance. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Robert Hurt

For planet-hunters, finding an Earth-sized exoplanet must be special. NASA estimates there are about 100 billion planets in the Milky Way, but the large majority of the 5,000+ exoplanets we’ve found are extremely inhospitable. So finding one that’s similar to ours is kind of comforting.

In this case, it’s even more interesting because it’s the second Earth-sized planet orbiting the same star.

January 12, 2023January 12, 2023 by Evan Gough

The Webb Has Confirmed its First Exoplanet, and it’s the Same Size as Earth.

This artist's illustration shows the exoplanet LHS 474 b, the first exoplanet detected by the James Webb Space Telescope. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, L. Hustak (STScI)

The James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful telescope ever launched into space. That power has led to a string of observational successes: ancient galaxies, obscured star-forming regions, and an exoplanet atmosphere. Now the telescope has identified its first exoplanet, and it’s a rocky planet the same size as Earth.

January 12, 2023January 12, 2023 by Evan Gough

Game of Probes: The First Probe Sent to Another Civilization Won’t Be the First to Arrive

An artist's concept of Voyager 1's view of the Solar System. Voyager 1 is one of our first interstellar probes, though it's an inadvertent one. It has no particular destination. Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Zachary and S. Redfield (Wesleyan University); Artist's Illustration Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI).

If we ever detect an Extraterrestrial Civilization (ETC) and start communicating with them, the messages could take years, decades, or even centuries to travel back and forth. We face a challenging 49-minute long delay just communicating with the Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter, and that’s well within our Solar System. Communicating with an ETC that’s hundreds of light-years away or even further is a daunting task.

It’s even worse if we’re sending probes.

January 11, 2023January 11, 2023 by Evan Gough

This Star is Blasting Out a Concentrated Jet of Material at 500 km/s

A team of astronomers was studying the masers around oddball star MWC 349A when they discovered something unexpected: a previously unseen jet of material launching from the star’s gas disk at impossibly high speeds. Image Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), M. Weiss (NRAO/AUI/NSF)

MWC 349A is a star about 3,900 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. It’s huge, about 38 times as massive as the Sun. It’s actually a binary star and may even be a triple star. It’s an oddball and one of the brightest sources of radio emission in the sky.

One of the star’s unusual features is its natural maser. MWC 349A’s natural maser played a central role in a new discovery: the young star emits a blistering jet of material travelling at 500 km/sec (310 m/sec.) That discovery could help astronomers understand massive stars and their complexity.

January 10, 2023January 10, 2023 by Evan Gough

The James Webb Links Modern Green Pea Galaxies to Ancient Galaxies in the Cosmic Dawn

A trio of faint objects (circled) captured in the James Webb Space Telescope’s deep image of the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 exhibit properties remarkably similar to rare, small galaxies called “green peas” found much closer to home. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

When the James Webb Space Telescope lifted off from Earth on Christmas Day in 2021, it carried a lot of expectations with it. One of its scientific goals is to seek the light from the first galaxies in the Universe and to study how galaxies form and evolve.

A new paper shows that the JWST is doing just that and has found a link between the first galaxies and rare galaxies in our backyard that astronomers call “Green Pea” galaxies.

January 9, 2023January 9, 2023 by Evan Gough

The JWST is the Shiny New Space Telescope, but the Dependable Hubble is Still Going Strong

The scattered stars of the globular cluster NGC 6355 are strewn across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This globular cluster lies less than 50,000 light-years from Earth in the Ophiuchus constellation. Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, E. Noyola, R. Cohen

The Venerable Hubble Space Telescope has cemented its place in history. Some call it the most successful science experiment ever. And while the James Webb Space Telescope might vie for that title, the Hubble does things that even the powerful JWST can’t do.

Exhibit A: this stunning image of NGC 6355.

January 9, 2023January 9, 2023 by Evan Gough

133 Days of the Sun’s Glory

NASA has created a video based on 133 days of observations by the Solar Dynamics Observatory. The hour-long video is a captivating look at four months of the Sun's approximately 10 billion year lifetime. Image Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has released an hour-long time-lapse video that shows 133 days of the Sun’s life. The video shows the Sun’s chaotic surface, where great loops of plasma arch above the star along magnetic field lines. Sometimes the looping plasma reconnects to the star, and other times it’s ejected into space, creating hazardous space weather.

January 9, 2023January 9, 2023 by Evan Gough

This Serpent’s Tail is Made of Starry Nebulae

This image of the spectacular Sh2-54 nebula was taken in infrared light using ESO’s VISTA telescope at Paranal Observatory in Chile. The clouds of dust and gas that are normally obvious in visible light are less evident here, and in this light we can see the light of the stars behind the nebulae now piercing through. Image Credit: ESO/VVVX

The ancients didn’t have the scientific understanding of nature that we have now. All they could do was look up at the night sky and wonder, which isn’t a bad way to spend time. Part of understanding something is naming it, and when the ancients looked up at the patterns in the stars, they gave them simple names based entirely on their appearances. That’s likely how the Greeks named the constellation Serpens: it looks like a snake, so they called it that.

The Greeks lacked astronomical telescopes, so they never saw any of the rich detail in Serpens that a new image from the European Southern Observatory reveals.

January 6, 2023January 6, 2023 by Evan Gough

Perseverance is Putting its Samples Onto the Surface of Mars, So a Future Helicopter can Pick Them Up

This image shows the location where NASA's Perseverance will begin depositing its first cache of samples. NASA's Perseverance Mars rover captured it on Dec. 14, 2022, the 646th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. This enhanced color image was taken by the rover's Mastcam-Z camera and is not representative of the way the scene would look to the human eye. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

At this point in its mission, NASA’s Mars Perseverance Rover has collected almost 50% of its samples. The rover is now building its first sample ‘depot’ on the surface of Mars. The depot is a flat, obstacle-free area with 11 separate landing circles, one for each sample tube and one for the lander.

A future mission will retrieve these samples by helicopter.