Carolyn Collins Petersen

Radio Telescope Array Reveals the Masses of Hidden Young Stars

May 01, 2026

The Orion Nebula provides a master class in the study of newly born stars as the closest starbirth region to us. Yet, many of its youngest ones are still swaddled in their birth creches, hidden by clouds of gas and dust. The Very Large Baseline Array (VLBA) radio telescopes have managed to punch through the dusty obscuring veil to study a pair of young binary systems called Brun 656 and HD 294300 born in the Nebula.

How a Meteorite Helps Explain Mercury's Chemical Makeup

April 29, 2026

Mercury is one of the four rocky worlds of the Solar System, yet its chemistry is very different from Earth, Venus, and Mars. Missions to the planet show that it has an iron-poor, but sulfur- and magnesium-rich crust. Furthermore, it's known to planetary scientists as the most reduced planet in the Solar system. It means that the chemical makeup is dominated by sulfides, carbides, and silicides -- as opposed to oxides like we see here on Earth.

Is the Earliest Supermassive Black Hole Mystery Solved?

April 29, 2026

One of the most intriguing puzzles in cosmology is the existence of supermassive black holes that seem to appear very early in the history of the Universe. Astronomers keep finding them at times when, by all that they understand about the infant Universe, they shouldn't be there. The standard theory of black hole formation suggests that they shouldn't have had enough time to grow as massive as they appear to be. Yet, there they are, monster black holes with the mass of at least a billion suns. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has found a large population of them in early epochs, and they've been observed in very early quasars as well.

A Cosmic Survey Reveals the Universe's Hidden Side

April 27, 2026

A team of scientists at the University of Virginia is using a telescope in Arizona to study cosmic structure and the result is the largest 3D map of the Universe ever created. The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) at Kitt Peak National Observatory is their tool, and the ultimate goal is to get a handle on the mystery of dark energy by charting the positions of galaxies.

Scientists Find Peculiar Differences in Two Uranian Rings

April 27, 2026

The planet Uranus is a weird place. Not only does it roll around the Sun on its side once every 84.3 Earth years, it also sports a spindly set of rings corralled in some places by strange little moons. Two of those rings, the μ (mu) and ν (nu) rings are incredibly faint, which makes them challenging to study.

Scientists Connect Sub-extreme Solar Outbursts to Tree Rings via Poetry

April 21, 2026

As we make our way through the latest solar maximum period, scholars and scientists are looking to similar events in the past to learn more about ancient bouts of solar activity. In particular, they want to know more about solar proton events (SPEs). These outbursts of high-energy particles get triggered by flares and coronal mass ejections.

How a Black Hole and a Shredded Star Could Light Up a Galaxy

April 17, 2026

In 2014, a strange cloudy object called G2 made a close approach to Sagittarius A*, (Sag A*) the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy. Astronomers were pretty excited, partly because they thought it might get torn apart by Sag A*'s intense gravitational pull. That didn't happen, and the event was a cosmic fizzle. Instead, G2 skipped around the black hole. Various observations showed that it wasn't just a gas cloud. It was likely a dusty protostellar object encased in a dusty cloud. Or perhaps several merged stars. But, it survived the flyby and continued on a shortened orbit.

JWST Sees Smoking Gun for Black Hole Mergers in the Virgo Cluster

April 15, 2026

A pair of dwarf galaxies in the giant Virgo Cluster show what can happen when these stellar cities interact. Scientists at the University of Michigan focused the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) onto the galaxies NGC 4486B and UCD736 and found each of them sporting "overmassive" black holes at or near their hearts. Those supermassive black holes comprise a large fraction of each galaxy's mass.

Exoplanet Host Star Shares Elemental Traits with Its Hot Jupiter

April 14, 2026

An ultra-hot Jupiter exoplanet orbiting a nearby star gave scientists using the Gemini South telescope a look at how both a star and its hot planet can have similar chemical compositions. The team, led by Arizona State University graduate student Jorge Antonio Sanchez, took spectra of the planet, called WASP-189b, using the Immersion Grating Infrared Spectrograph instrument. The observations measured the abundance of magnesium compared to silicon in the hot planet's atmosphere and allowed the team to compare it to the makeup of its parent star.

Scientists Spot a Solar Flare With Surprising Spectral Behavior

April 10, 2026

On August 19, 2022, astronomers using the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) on the Hawaiian island of Maui caught the fading remnants of a C-class solar flare. Their observations showed something unusual: very strong spectral fingerprints of calcium II H and hydrogen-epsilon lines. It was the first time these two light signatures were seen in great detail during a flare. According to computer models, those lines were stronger than expected and play a not well-understood role in how flares heat the solar atmosphere where they occur.

JWST Spies Once-hidden Treasures in the W51 Starbirth Crèche

April 06, 2026

Star formation is a dramatic and complex process that erupts throughout the Universe. Yet, a lot of the action gets hidden by clouds of gas and dust. That's where observatories such as the James Webb Telescope JWST and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) come in handy. They use infrared light and radio waves, respectively, to pierce the veil surrounding the process of starbirth.

Black Hole Runs Out of Gas, Rapidly Dims its Galaxy

March 31, 2026

It's not often that astronomers can observe huge changes in a galaxy's brightness over the course of a few years. Most galaxies change in brightness (and other characteristics) over millions or billions of years. So, when images of the 10-billion-light-year distant galaxy J0218-0036 showed that it dimmed down by a twentieth of its previous brightness in just 20 years, observers were surprised. What could cause it to do that? That's not "normal" for AGN.

Oldest Carbon-rich Stars Open a Window to Early Cosmic Chemistry

March 30, 2026

Astronomers studying the ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Pictor II have found an extremely chemically peculiar star that contains traces of elements created by the first stars in the Universe. It's called PicII-503, a "second-generation star" that is one of the most chemically primitive stars ever found.

Solar Activity Could Threaten the Artemis Crew

March 29, 2026

In his blockbuster 1982 novel "Space", the writer James A. Michener wove a gripping tale of astronauts trapped on the Moon during a major solar storm. Warnings from Earth didn't come soon enough to save them from death by radiation sickness. To avoid such a tragedy happening with the Artemis crews (as with the Apollo crews of the past), NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will monitor the Sun. If it acts up, the teams will be able to send warnings and instructions to the Artemis crews to pro tect them.

Parabolic Flight Experiments Delve into Planetary Formation

March 23, 2026

What happens in a protoplanetary disk to create planetesimals around a star? We know the general story -- the material begins to clump together and eventually grows from dust grains to rocky bodies capable of sticking together to make planets. But, how does that dust begin the aggregation journey? That's what a research team from the Switzerland wanted to know. So, they did experiments aboard parabolic micro-gravity flights to find an answer.

Something is Changing the Small Magellanic Cloud

March 18, 2026

A strange lack of stellar orbits around the core of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) mystified astronomers for decades. Not only that, but the SMC has a strange, irregular shape, and sports a tidal. Now, a team of observers led by graduate student Himansch Rathore at the University of Arizona, has tracked down the reason why the stars don't orbit. It's because the SMC crashed directly through its neighbor, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), in the distant past. That huge collision disrupted stellar motions and [sent them on wildly different trajectories](https://www.universetoday.com/articles/something-is-tearing-the-small-magellanic-cloud-apart). It also disturbed the clouds of gas within the SMC and created a tail of gas stretching out across space.

Growing Future Meals in Space Will Require Human Waste

February 28, 2026

Future farmers on the Moon and Mars will have a big challenge: how to grow healthy food in two extremely unhealthy environments. That's because the soil on both worlds isn't at all hospitable to plants and animals. Neither are other conditions. Both are irradiated worlds, Mars has a thin atmosphere and the Moon has none at all. So, how will future colonists on either world grow their food?

JWST Digs Into the Uranian Ionosphere

February 27, 2026

Uranus is a planet that seems to roll around on its side as it orbits the Sun. That's because it's tipped over, with an axial tilt of 97.8 degrees. That weird tilt gave the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) a chance to probe the ionosphere using the Near Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec) instrument. An international team of astronomers used the data to map the vertical structure of that region and detect faint auroral displays.

Searching Out Missing Links in Galaxy Evolution

February 20, 2026

How do galaxies evolve? When did they start forming? Those are questions astronomers and cosmologists are working to answer. The standard path includes early bright starforming activity, a middle age, and then a quiescent old age where they stop making stars. That changes if the galaxy happens to collide with another one, because that spurs new bouts of starbirth. It's been this way since stars and galaxies first began forming, slightly less than a billion years after the Big Bang.

Ancient Massive Stars Enriched Early Clusters and Birthed First Black Holes

February 19, 2026

The early Universe was a busy place. As the infant cosmos exanded, that epoch saw the massive first stars forming, along with protogalaxies. It turns out those extremely massive early stars were stirring up chemical changes in the first globular clusters, as well. Not only that, many of those monster stars ultimately collapsed as black holes.

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