Space and astronomy news
If you want to know what the newly forming Solar System looked like, study planetary disks around other stars. Like them, our star was a single star forming its retinue of worlds and other stars did the same. This all happened 4.5 billion years ago, so we have to look at similar systems around nearby stars.
Continue reading “Several Double Planetary Disks Found”
A short time ago, astronomers observed a distant supermassive black hole (SMBH) located in a galaxy 270 million light-years away in the constellation Draco. For years, this galaxy (1ES 1927+654) has been the focus of attention because of the Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) at its core. It all began in 2018 when the SMBH’s X-ray corona mysteriously disappeared, followed by a major outburst in the optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray wavelengths. Astronomers began watching it closely, but what they saw next was completely unexpected!
As we covered in a previous article, much of the excitement was generated by the SMBH’s behavior, which suggested it was consuming a stellar remnant (a white dwarf). In addition, astronomers noted a huge increase in radio emissions and the formation of plasma jets extending from the black hole, which all happened over the course of a year. In a new paper, a team led by the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) describes how they watched a plasma jet forming in real time, something astronomers have never done before.
Continue reading “Black Hole Jets Seen Forming in Real-Time”China’s Chang’e 7 lunar lander mission will feature a flag fluttering in the vacuum of space.
It’s one of the most often asked questions I get, while showing off the Moon to the public. “Can you see the flag the astronauts left there?” This then leads to a discussion on how far the Moon is, versus the difficulty of seeing a 1.5 by 0.9 meter flag at such a distance. My ‘scope is good, but not that good.
During the U.S. Apollo program, six crewed missions landed on the Moon starting with Apollo 11 in 1969, leaving a like number of flags. Now, China recently announced that one more flag will join the collection in late 2026, when Chang’e 7 heads to the Moon.
Continue reading “China’s Chang’e 7 Will Include a Flag That Will ‘Flap’ on the Moon”
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”
There’s a Universe full of black holes out there, spinning merrily away—some fast, others more slowly. A recent survey of supermassive black holes reveals that their spin rates reveal something about their formation history.
Continue reading “Black Holes are Spinning Faster Than Expected”
The exoplanet census continues to grow. Currently, 5,819 exoplanets have been confirmed in 4,346 star systems, while thousands more await confirmation. The vast majority of these planets were detected in the past twenty years, owing to missions like the Kepler Space Telescope, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), the venerable Hubble, the Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits (CoRoT) mission, and more. Thousands more are expected as the James Webb Space Telescope continues its mission and is joined by the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (RST).
In the meantime, astronomers will soon have another advanced observatory to help search for potentially habitable exoplanets. It’s called Pandora, a small satellite that was selected in 2021 as part of NASA’s call for Pioneer mission concepts. This observatory is designed to study planets detected by other missions by studying these planets’ atmospheres of exoplanets and the activity of their host stars with long-duration multiwavelength observations. The mission is one step closer to launch with the completion of the spacecraft bus, which provides the structure, power, and other systems.
Continue reading “NASA is Building a Space Telescope to Observe Exoplanet Atmospheres”
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”DwarfLab’s new Dwarf 3 smartscope packs a powerful punch in a small unit.
In the past decade, amateur astronomy has witnessed nothing short of a revolution, as smartscopes have come to the fore. In half a century of skywatching, we’ve used just about every iteration of GoTo system available, starting with the now almost prehistoric ‘push-and-point’ AstroMaster units of the 90s. Strange to think, these were the hot new thing for telescopes in the 90s… though you still often had to perform a visual spiral search to actually find the target.
We recently had a chance to put Dwarf Lab’s new Dwarf 3 smartscope through its paces, and were impressed with what we’ve seen thus far. The small telescope even has personality: my wife said it actually looked like Johnny 5 from the 80s movie Short Circuit on start up (!)
Continue reading “Review: Dwarf Lab’s New Dwarf 3 Smartscope”
Dark matter may have to go on a diet, according to new research.
Continue reading “Dark Matter Can’t Be Too Heavy”