Infinity Cosmos

  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 the first reported case of a planet orbiting a double-star system, which is then orbited by a second pair of stars. This phenomenon is called a circumbinary planet in a four-star system. PH1 is a bit larger than Neptune and is thought to be a gas giant. It orbits its host stars every 137 days and is 900 times farther from its star than Earth is from our sun.  This planet’s discovery has been revolutionary for the astronomy community. The discovery of PH1 was made possible by volunteers from the Planet Hunters citizen science project. This project has allowed everyday citizens to contribute to cutting edge astronomical research and make amazing discoveries like PH1.  The planet'...

  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 our current telescopes can only detect planets through two main methods: wobbles and shadows. Thus, the planet that lies beneath our feet appears to be a unique and mysterious anomaly among the many cosmic wonders that have been discovered in the universe. It is this special and strange nature of our planet that makes it such a remarkable and awe-inspiring part of the cosmos; we are truly a special place in an ever-expanding universe. The “wobble” method, or radial velocity, is an effective planet-hunting tool used to uncover the presence of orbiting planets using the subtle back-and-forth motion caused by gravity. This tugging motion between a star and its orbiting planet can be dete...

  The Hubble Space Telescope has produced a image of Sirius A and its faint companion Sirius B, two stars in our night sky. At the center of the image is the brightest star in the night sky, Sirius A.To the bottom left we can see the tiny dot of Sirius B, which would’ve gone undetected without its overexposure. The cross-shaped diffraction spikes and concentric rings around Sirius A,and the small ring around Sirius B are artifacts produced by the telescope’s imaging system. The two stars are in a binary star system, meaning they revolve around each other in an elliptical orbit every 50 years. Sirius A is located 8.6 light-years away from Earth and is the fifth closest star system known. Sirius B is a white dwarf star, a small remnant of a star similar to our sun that has exhausted its nuclear fuel sources and collapsed down to a fraction of its original size. It is 10,000 times fainter than Sirius A and its feeble light makes it very hard to observe from Earth. Fortunately for us, ...

  Gazing up at the night sky, it is easy to be struck by a sense of awe and wonder. We can see galaxies trillions of miles away, the closest of which is our own Milky Way. But what about galaxies that lie beyond our own? One such galaxy is ESO 300-16, a ghostly assemblage of stars 28.7 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of this distant galaxy, which resembles a sparkling cloud. Included in the image are other distant galaxies and foreground stars making this an astronomical portrait of the cosmos.  This picture is part of a series of observations aimed at getting to know our galactic neighbors. Hubble has been able to observe around three-quarters of the known galaxies within 10 megaparsecs (or 30.9 trillion kilometers) from Earth, enough to detect the brightest stars and measure the distance of these galaxies. A team of astronomers has even proposed using gaps in Hubble’s schedule to observe ...

  The Hubble Space Telescope has in 2019 provided data that significantly reduces the chance that the current expansion rate of the Universe, as measured by Hubble, does not match the expected rate based on conditions from shortly after the Big Bang over 13 billion years ago.The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has revolutionized the way we calculate accurate distances to galaxies, by observing Cepheid variables in the Large Magellanic Cloud. These pulsating stars act as milepost markers, which researchers can use to measure how fast the Universe is expanding over time - a value known as the Hubble constant. Before Hubble was launched in 1990, estimates of the Hubble constant varied greatly, but thanks to its precision observations, the uncertainty was reduced to 10% by the late 1990s. Subsequent refinements have further reduced that uncertainty to a remarkable 1.9%, allowing scientists to gain a greater understanding of the cosmos. This research suggests that the discrepancy betwee...

  NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team has begun the important process of integrating and testing the spacecraft’s electrical cabling, or harness. This harness plays a crucial role in connecting the various components of the observatory, since it enables different parts of the observatory to communicate with one , while also another  providing power and helping the central computer monitor the observatory’s function via an array of sensors. Thus, this important step brings the mission a step closer to its launch by May 2027, when it will survey billions of cosmic objects and untangle mysteries like dark energy. According to Deneen Ferro, the Roman harness project development lead at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, “Just as the nervous system carries signals throughout the human body, Roman’s harness connects its components, providing both power and commands to each electronic box and instrument. Without a harness, there is no spacecraft.” Cl...

  NASA’s Parker Solar Probe zoomed past Venus on Aug. 21, using the planet’s gravity to aim toward a record-setting series of flights around the Sun that start next month. The spacecraft was moving at a speed of 15 miles per second, and passed 2,487 miles above the Venusian surface as it curved around the planet. The mission operations team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland kept in contact with the spacecraft during the flyby through NASA’s Deep Space Network and determined that it was on course and functioning properly.  Except for an 8 minute period when Venus blocked communication between the spacecraft and Earth, the mission operations team were able to successfully monitor and track the probe’s progress. The flyby marks a significant step towards Parker Solar Probe's goal of exploring the Sun's atmosphere, and hopefully uncovering answers to some of its biggest mysteries. Nick Pinkine, Parker Solar Probe mission operations manager from APL, recen...