Universe Today

January 14, 2025January 14, 2025 by Mark Thompson

Astronomers Reveal the 3D Structure of the Ring Nebula

The Ring Nebula as captured in visible light by Hubble Space Telescope, left; in radio emission from CO molecules by the Submillimeter Array (SMA), center; and in the infrared by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), right. The image is overlaid with contours of emission from CO that is moving perpendicular to our sight line, showing how the molecular gas imaged by the SMA envelopes the ionized gas imaged by JWST.

I’ve lost count of the number of times I have seen the Ring Nebula. It’s a favourite amongst stargazers around the globe and is surely one of the most well known objects in the night sky. The remains of a Sun-like star, its outer layers have drifted out into space leaving behind a the stellar corpse, a white dwarf. It looks like a giant smoke ring in the sky but what is its true shape? A team of astronomers have mapped carbon monoxide that surrounds the nebula and built a 3D model to reveal its shape.

January 14, 2025January 14, 2025 by Andy Tomaswick

It’s Official, 2024 Was the Hottest Year on Record

Climate scientists must fear sounding like a broken record when discussing new record temperatures yearly. But once again, last year was the hottest one ever recorded, according to a new study by NASA scientists.

January 14, 2025January 14, 2025 by Evan Gough

The Webb Shows Us Where Cosmic Dust Comes From

Concentric rings of dust form around the pair of binary stars named Wolf-Rayet 140. The dust is formed when the stellar winds from the stars slam into each other every few years. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, JPL-Caltech

Carbon-rich cosmic dust comes from different sources and spreads out into space, where it’s necessary for life and for the formation of rocky planets like ours. When astronomers aim their telescopes at objects in the sky, they often have to contend with this cosmic dust that obscures their targets and confounds their observations.

One reason the JWST was built is to see through some of this dust with its infrared vision and unlock new insights into astrophysical processes. In new work, the JWST was tasked with observing the dust itself.

January 14, 2025January 15, 2025 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Jupiter’s Clouds Contain Smoggy Ammonium Hydrosulphide, Not Ammonia Ice

Jupiter and Saturn images from VLT/MUSE observations in March 2020. They show Jupiter's clouds as well as those in Saturn's atmosphere. Courtesy Irwin, et al. 2026, JGR Planets.

Jupiter’s clouds aren’t what we thought they were. Planetary atmosphere experts have studied them for many years, uncovering new and puzzling mysteries. Recently, several researchers banded together to solve a long-standing mystery about those clouds. It turns out they aren’t made of ammonia ice, which is what everyone has thought for years. Instead, they appear as largely a mix of smog and ammonium hydrosulfide. That compound forms in the atmosphere as hydrogen sulfide gas passes through ammonia.

January 14, 2025January 14, 2025 by Brian Koberlein

Here's How We Could Measure the Mass of SgrA* to Within One Solar Mass

Image of the supermassive black hole Sag A* seen in polarized light. Credit: EHT Collaboration

There is a gravitational monster at the heart of our galaxy. Known as Sagittarius A*, it is a supermassive black hole with a mass of more than four million Suns. Long-term observations of the stars closely orbiting Sag A* place it at about 4.3 solar masses, give or take 100,000 or so. Observations of light near its horizon by the Event Horizon Telescope pin the mass down to 4.297 solar masses, give or take about 10,000. Those results are astoundingly precise given how difficult the mass is to measure, but suppose we could determine the mass of our galaxy’s black hole to within a single solar mass. That might be possible with gravitational wave astronomy.

January 13, 2025January 11, 2025 by Paul M. Sutter

How to Debate a Flat-Earther

The problem with debating a flat-Earther is that they didn’t arrive at their conclusions from the weight evidence, so using the evidence isn’t going to work to change their minds.

January 13, 2025January 13, 2025 by Mark Thompson

LIGO Has Detected Unusual Black Holes Merging, But they Probably Don’t Explain Dark Matter

The traditional theory of black hole formation seems to struggle to explain how black holes can merge into larger more massive black holes yet they have been seen with LIGO. It’s possible that they may have formed at the beginning of time and if so, then they may be a worthy candidate to explain dark matter but only if there are enough of them. A team of researchers recently searched for microlensing events from black holes in the Large Magellanic Cloud but didn’t find enough to account for more than a fraction of dark matter.

January 13, 2025January 13, 2025 by Evan Gough

Gravitational Waves Could Give Us Insights into Fast Radio Bursts

This artist's illustration shows a neutron star with a powerful magnetic field, a magnetar. Scientists want to know if magnetars can generate both Fast Radio Bursts and Gravitational Waves. Image Credit: ESO/L. Calçada

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are mysterious pulses of energy that can last from a fraction of a millisecond to about three seconds. Most of them come from outside the galaxy, although one has been detected coming from a source inside the Milky Way. Some of them also repeat, which only adds to their mystery.

Though astrophysicists think that a high-energy astrophysical process is the likely source of FRBs, they aren’t certain how they’re generated. Researchers used gravitational waves (GWs) to observe one nearby, known source of FRBs to try to understand them better.

January 13, 2025January 13, 2025 by Evan Gough

As We Explore the Solar System, Radiation Will Be One of Our Greatest Threats

Astronauts are vulnerable to radiation from the Sun and other sources. They're even more vulnerable beyond the ISS, on missions to the lunar or Martian surfaces. However, different countries and space agencies assess the risk differently. That needs to change. Image Credit: NASA

The Sun can kill. Until Earth developed its ozone layer hundreds of millions of years ago, life couldn’t venture out onto dry land for fear of exposure to the Sun’s deadly ultraviolet radiation. Even now, the 1% of its UV radiation that reaches the surface can cause cancer and even death.

Astronauts outside of Earth’s protective ozone layer and magnetic shield are exposed to far more radiation than on the planet’s surface. Exposure to radiation from the Sun and elsewhere in the cosmos is one of the main hurdles that must be cleared in long-duration space travel or missions to the lunar and Martian surfaces.

Unfortunately, there’s no harmonized approach to understanding the complexity of the hazard and protecting astronauts from it.

January 13, 2025January 13, 2025 by Matt Williams

LIGO Fails to Find Continuous Gravitational Waves From Pulsars

Illustration of a pulsar with powerful magnetic fields. Credit: NASA's Goddard Flight Center/Walt Feimer

In February 2016, scientists working for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) made history by announcing the first-ever detection of gravitational waves (GW). These waves, predicted by Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, are created when massive objects collide (neutron stars or black holes), causing ripples in spacetime that can be detected millions or billions of light years away. Since their discovery, astrophysicists have been finding applications for GW astronomy, which include probing the interiors of neutron stars.

For instance, scientists believe that probing the continuous gravitational wave (CW) emissions from neutron stars will reveal data on their internal structure and equation of state and can provide tests of General Relativity. In a recent study, members of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration conducted a search for CWs from 45 known pulsars. While their results showed no signs of CWs emanating from their sample of pulsars, their work does establish upper and lower limits on the signal amplitude, potentially aiding future searches.