The Star Wars universe has some of the most iconic looking planets ever to be seen on the big screen. From arid planets such as Jakku and Tatooine to watery worlds such as Kamino and Scarif, the places shown in the movies have captured the imaginations of moviegoers for decades. Now, NASA plans to use these colorful Star Wars worlds as inspiration in its hunt for other […]
Researchers have used the ALMA telescopes to observe the early stages in the formation of a new solar system. For the first time they have seen how a powerful whirlwind shoot out from the rotating disc of gas and dust surrounding the young star. (via WSJ)
Researchers have proposed a new detection method to discover about 10 black holes per year. At this rate, the number of known black holes can double within two years. Black holes are known to absorb all light and matter. They also emit zero radiation which makes it difficult to image and detect them amid a black background in space. Now, researchers proposed a new method that may […]
News last month of Gwen Ifill’s death hit hard for many journalists. Ifill, who was co-host of “PBS NewsHour,” was a pioneer in newsrooms and on the television. On Thursday, “PBS NewsHour” shared letters and a video from journalists that Ifill inspired. Reporter Kenya Downs wrote that “women journalists of color offer a special reflection on her impact in an industry once dominated by White men.” After […]
The constellation of Virgo (The Virgin) is especially rich in galaxies, due in part to the presence of a massive and gravitationally-bound collection of over 1,300 galaxies called the Virgo Cluster. One particular member of this cosmic community, NGC 4388, is captured in this image, as seen by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). (via WSJ)
What will happen to Earth when, in a few billion years’ time, the sun is a hundred times bigger than it is today? Using the most powerful radio telescope in the world, an international team of astronomers has set out to look for answers in the star L2 Puppis. Five billion years ago, this star was very similar to the sun as it is today. (via WSJ)
Scientists have developed a new optical chip for a telescope that enables astronomers to have a clear view of alien planets that may support life. (via WSJ)
New observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have revealed the intricate structure of the galaxy NGC 4696 in greater detail than ever before. The elliptical galaxy is a beautiful cosmic oddity with a bright core wrapped in system of dark, swirling, thread-like filaments. (via WSJ)
A research team has characterized the smallest known asteroid using Earth-based telescopes: Asteroid 2015 TC25 measures just 6 feet across, they report. (via WSJ)
What looks like a teleporter from science fiction being draped over NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, is actually a “clean tent.” The clean tent protects Webb from dust and dirt when engineers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center transport the telescope out of the relatively dust-free cleanroom and into the vibration and acoustics testing areas. Source link
Photo Ralph Branca of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951 after giving up a home run to Bobby Thomson that sent the New York Giants to the World Series. Credit Rogers Photo Archive, via Getty Images In 1902, a seamstress named Katherine Berger married a trolley-car conductor named John Branca and spent half of the next 26 years pregnant, giving birth 17 times. One of her children, Ralph […]
In baseball lore the moment has been preserved in amber, alongside Lou Gehrig’s farewell at Yankee Stadium, Don Larsen’s perfect game in a World Series and “the Catch,” Willie Mays’s spectacular over-the-shoulder, warning-track snare of a Series blast at the same Polo Grounds, three years after Thomson’s “shot.” It was immortalized in American literature by Don DeLillo, who opened his 1997 novel, “Underworld,” with an extended passage […]
This image of galaxy cluster Abell 2744, also called Pandora’s Cluster, was taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope. Source link
In this photograph taken on Sept. 1, 2016, the James Webb Space Telescope Pathfinder structure has been configured for the Thermal Pathfinder Test at NASA Johnson Space Center’s giant thermal vacuum chamber, called Chamber A. The Pathfinder is a test version of the structure that supports the telescope. Source link
Mysterious, flashy radio waves originating from deep space known as fast radio burst or FRB have been a mystery and their sources have eluded astronomers. However, the brightest FRB recorded so far, precisely the 18th, known as FRB 150807 has been viewed by scientists led by Caltech scholar Vikram Ravi. Their findings are going to be a breakthrough for scientists in many respects. The research paper was published in the […]
Thanks to NASA’s Spitzer and Swift space telescopes joining forces to study a microlensing event, astronomers had a rare achievement of locating an elusive brown dwarf planet. The debut collaboration made the microlensing event a useful occasion. During the phenomenon, a distant star looks brighter thanks to the gravitational pull of a cosmic object in the foreground, which, in turn, makes highlighting of low-mass bodies that orbit big stars […]
Astronomers have identified the roundest object measured in the universe. The object, a distant star located about 5,000 light years away from planet Earth, is more than twice the size of the sun but is significantly more round. Stars And Planets Not Perfectly Spherical Stars and planets are not perfect spheres. These celestial object flatten out in the middle when they rotate because of centrifugal force. The […]
A consortium of space and research organizations, Project Blue is aiming to photograph planets around the Alpha Centauri star system, starting with launching a Kickstarter campaign to fund efforts to spot a “pale blue dot” that signify Earth-like planetary conditions conducive to life. Set to last until Dec. 21, 2016, the Project Blue Kickstarter campaign has a funding goal of at least $1 million. It’s a dramatically […]
The main US markets regulator on Tuesday approved a plan to introduce a vast surveillance system to monitor trading on the $23tn US stock market, ending six years of delays. The move by the Securities and Exchange Commission sets in motion a timetable to bring to reality its Consolidated Audit Trail, a single data warehouse that collects the millions of orders and quotes that daily pass across […]
Clouds, weather conditions and intense urban lighting may have prevented some people to see and appreciate the supermoon this week but there were lucky ones who were able to gaze and capture amazing photos of the moon. One man may have been luckier though as he was able to capture what some think is a video of UFOs passing by the lunar orb. The supermoon watcher managed to […]
The primary mirror of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope that consists of 18 hexagonal mirrors looks like a giant puzzle piece standing in the massive clean room of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The telescope will help piece together puzzles scientists have been trying to solve throughout the cosmos. Source link
Representatives from Breakthrough Listen launched Nov. 7 the Parkes Radio Telescope, a $100 million project that had been going on for a decade, in the attempt to seek extraterrestrial life. The telescope is currently looking for proof in the vicinity of Proxima Centauri after the discovery of a possibly habitable planet in August 2016. Humanity’s interest in discovering alien life has gained traction along with the technological […]
Research led by Johns Hopkins University astrophysicists using information from a NASA space telescope breaks new ground in ways to observe a star swallowed by a black hole, promising to help paint a clearer picture of this cosmic phenomenon. The results, published online in the Astrophysical Journal, are based on two methods that are new in the study of this sort of star destruction: the first infrared […]
Using the world’s most powerful telescopes, an international team of astronomers has found a massive galaxy that consists almost entirely of dark matter. The galaxy, Dragonfly 44, is located in the nearby Coma constellation and had been overlooked until last year because of its unusual composition: It is a diffuse “blob” about the size of the Milky Way, but with far fewer stars. “Very soon after its […]
