The discovery of an enormous planet orbiting a dying star, known as 8 Ursae Minoris b, is shaking up our understanding of how planets form and the limits of stellar destruction. Astronomers have been surprised to find the planet in a stable, nearly circular orbit around the star, as it had been expected that … Read more
Arp 107, a pair of galaxies in the midst of a cosmic collision. using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), we can get a great look at this amazing phenomenon. The larger galaxy in the image is a Seyfert galaxy, a type of powerful and energetic galaxy with an active … Read more
The grand-design spiral galaxy M51 is enveloped by graceful and winding arms that are captured in this image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. Unlike other galaxies which have ragged or disrupted spiral arms, M51 has prominent and well-developed arms that are clearly visible. This portrait was taken by the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) … Read more
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has provided an extremely detailed view of Herbig-Haro 211, a young star analogous to our Sun. This nearby star is surrounded by gas and dust which is propelled outward at high speeds due to the stellar winds or jets of gas from the new star. The image taken by … Read more
Have you ever wondered how fast the universe is expanding? Scientists have been asking this same question for years. In fact, it’s one of the most fundamental parameters for understanding the evolution and ultimate fate of the cosmos. This rate of expansion is known as the “Hubble Constant”, and measuring it precisely is an incredibly … Read more
This artist’s concept shows what K2-18 b could look like, 120 light-years away from Earth in the habitable zone around the cool dwarf star K2-18. Data collected by the telescope reveals the presence of carbon-bearing molecules such as methane and carbon dioxide, suggesting K2-18 b may have a water ocean underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. … Read more
The first astronauts to land on Mars may owe a debt of gratitude to the descendants of a microwave oven sized device called MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment). It has been used 16 times on NASA’s Perseverance rover and has proven to be far more successful than its creators at the Massachusetts … Read more
The colorful image of the globular star cluster Terzan 12 is an awe-inspiring example of how dust in space can influence the starlight that comes from background objects. A globular star cluster is a collection of stars, bound together by gravity, which present in a spheroidal formation. There are around 150 ancient globular clusters … Read more
Using NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which launched in 2004, scientists have discovered a black hole in a distant galaxy repeatedly nibbling on a Sun-like star. This remarkable discovery signals a new era of Swift science, made possible by a novel method for analyzing data from the satellite’s X-ray Telescope (XRT). Phil Evans, an astrophysicist … Read more
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) has captured images of the Chandrayaan-3 landing site on the Moon’s surface. ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 successfully landed on the Moon’s surface on August 23, 2023, in an area located around 600 kilometers from the Moon’s South Pole. The LRO spacecraft is providing a unique opportunity for scientists to gain an … Read more
Gazing out into the night sky, it’s easy to be in awe of the wonders of the universe. But there’s one particular sight that’s truly out of this world: the swirling galaxy IC 1776, located over 150 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Pisces. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope recently captured a … Read more
Messier 89, located in the Virgo constellation, was discovered and catalogued by Charles Messier in 1781. Messier was an astronomer who had grown tired of being mistaken for Halley’s comet after identifying a faint object in the sky. To prevent others from making the same mistake, he created a catalogue of bright deep-sky objects … Read more
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has begun to study one of the most renowned supernovae, SN 1987A (Supernova 1987A). Located 168,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, SN 1987A has been closely observed at various wavelengths for nearly 40 years since its discovery in February of 1987. Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) captured a detailed … Read more
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live on a planet that orbits two stars?It could have been our imagination to think, but until recently, it was thought to be something that only existed in the realm of science fiction. That is, until the discovery of Kepler-64b or PH1. PH1 is … Read more
One of the strangest things in the cosmos might be us. Among the thousands of planets known to be orbiting around other stars, a planet with Earth’s same size and similar distance from its star has yet to be found. This is likely due to the technical difficulty of finding such a sister planet, since … Read more
