Space

What do you feel when you see the aurora? Otherwise known as the northern or southern lights, an aurora is light emitted by upper atmospheric particles as they interact with energized ones from the magnetosphere. style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-9688449139706569" data-ad-slot="3059979275" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"> It's an awe-inspiring and otherworldly event that those living at high latitudes can experience often. In Cree and Ojibwe teachings, the northern lights are ancestral spirits who remain and communicate from the sky. To scientists, the aurora is an infinitely complex amalgamation of ionospheric dynamics, a manifestation of Earth's intrinsic connection to the sun. To industry, it's a risk factor. The aurora borealis seen above the Saskatoon SuperDARN space weather radar. (A. Reimer) The Starlink destruction event In February 2022, SpaceX launched

One of the great mysteries in astronomy is how galaxies form. At issue is why stars gather into “island universes” rather than spreading out evenly through the universe. One clue comes from the observation that most galaxies contain massive black holes at their centers. That has led to the proposal that galaxies form around black holes which act as seeds for this process. But there is a problem with this idea. If it is true, something must stop stars from falling into black holes as they form, but nobody knows what. Winds of Change Now a new theory of black holes explains this process. The new theory “gives a general mechanism by which a central black hole can catalyze galaxy formation,” says Stephen Adler, at Princeton University in New Jersey. Adler’s new theory is based on the way black holes interact with dark energy, which astronomers think fills the universe. This energy, he says, causes black holes to leak matter, creating a “wind” of particles that stream away. When this wind c

The first images from India's Chandrayaan-3 mission taken after the probe's historic moon touchdown reveal a pockmarked surface near the lunar south pole. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) shared the images on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday (Aug. 23), about four hours after the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft completed its smooth descent.  The first set of four images were taken by the lander's Horizontal Velocity Camera as it was nearing the surface of the moon. An additional image from the Landing Imager Camera, shared a little later, shows a glimpse of the landing site, including a portion of the spacecraft's landing leg and its shadow.  "The communication link is established between the Ch-3 Lander and MOX-ISTRAC, Bengaluru," ISRO said in a post on X. "Chandrayaan-3 chose a relatively flat region on the lunar surface," the agency added in the subsequent post. The landing made India only the fourth country in history to successfully put a

Ever since Voyager 2 flew past Neptune in 1989, the giant dark smudges that appear in the distant planet's atmosphere have presented a strange puzzle. Now, for the first time, we have observed one with Earth-based instruments in unprecedented resolution, helping scientists figure out why those patches appear so dark and why they are so different from spots on other planets. "Since the first discovery of a dark spot, I've always wondered what these short-lived and elusive dark features are," says astronomer Patrick Irwin of the University of Oxford in the UK. "I'm absolutely thrilled to have been able to not only make the first detection of a dark spot from the ground, but also record for the very first time a reflection spectrum of such a feature." Neptune's dark vortices are actually anticyclonic storms, like the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, but they differ in several key, and mysterious, ways. For one thing, they are comparatively short-lived, appear

Astronomers in charge of the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a black hole in the heart of a dwarf galaxy that, rather than absorbing stars, generates them. This revelation challenges the commonly held belief that black holes are matter destroyers. The process by which these stars form is peculiar and differs from what is found in larger galaxies. Gas may be observed circling about the black hole known as Henize 2-10 before merging with a dense core of gas within the galaxy, according to the astronomers. “Hubble's spectroscopy shows that the outflow was moving at a million miles per hour, hitting the dense gas like a garden hose hitting a mound of dirt. Clusters of newborn stars dot the path of the outflow propagation,” explains NASA .   Next, a video in which you can observe this curious phenomenon:

Yeti Dynamics, a YouTuber , developed a movie to demonstrate the size of the planets in our solar system by placing them in a familiar context: the Moon. See for yourself by scrolling down!

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured the first direct image of a distant exoplanet, a world beyond our Solar System. Webb has returned several pictures of the exoplanet HIP 65426 b, a gas giant six to twelve times the mass of Jupiter located roughly 385 light years from Earth, using a range of instruments. The James Webb Space Telescope captured this image of the exoplanet HIP 65426 b. (Nasa) The findings are part of an ongoing investigation and have not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal, but Nasa announced them in a blog post Thursday morning. "This is a pivotal moment, not only for Webb but also for astronomy in general," said Sasha Hinkley, associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Exeter. She is the principal scientist in an international team studying exoplanets. HIP 65426 b was discovered in 2017 by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, which observed the exoplanet in short wavelen

Two satellites' data provide a breath-taking cloudless view of Earth, complete with an astonishing 80 trillion pixels. The mosaic of photos was captured by the Sentinel-2 satellites, which are operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) and consist of two spacecraft: Sentinel-2A (launched on June 23, 2015) and Sentinel-2b (March 7, 2017). The two satellites are orbiting at a height of around 790 kilometres (490 miles). EOX, a German mapping company, pieced the mosaic together. To ensure that the mosaic was cloud-free, the photos for each region were captured at various times. They were collected between May and September 2016 in the Northern Hemisphere, and from November 2016 to March 2017 in the Southern Hemisphere. From May 2016 to April 2017, the tropical regions are depicted. “To have a visually appealing mosaic, it is desired to show the Earth during summer, when vegetation reaches its annual peak,” explained Joachim Ungar, Lead Cartographer at EOX, in a blog post. The team us

The Slow Mo Guys are well-known for their slow-motion videos, but they travelled to Caltech this time to use the world's fastest camera. What exactly did they intend to film? The speed of light is 10 trillion frames per second. To put things in perspective, their regular cameras, while amazing, are still 20 million times slower than this one from Caltech. They worked together to try to slow down the speed of light. The measurements are in picoseconds and femtoseconds. We can see why the Slow Mo Guys are overjoyed with their new venture. View the video below:

In late June, researchers reported that Voyager 1 was sending data to Earth indicating that it had lost its orientation in space. In general, the probe's problems are not surprising given that it was originally sent on a five-year journey through the solar system. Meanwhile, 45 years have passed since the launch of the probe from the Earth's surface. Therefore, the defects should not surprise anyone. On the other hand, as long as the probe is working, everything should be done to keep it alive as long as possible. After all, Voyager 1 and its sister spacecraft Voyager 2 provide the Earth with information about interstellar space, where we will not soon have another probe. Solution Controllers analyzing the data sent by the probe have just announced that Voyager 1 is again transmitting correct telemetry data to Earth. It was known from the very beginning that the fault was related to the system responsible for ensuring that the probe's antenna was always directed towards the

Scientists have warned that if Neptune's orbit is disrupted by a passing star by just 0.1 percent, the planets in our solar system might collide. The research, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, suggests that a "stellar flyby" - a relatively common occurrence in the universe - could be enough to cause planets to collide. If Mercury and Jupiter's perihelion — the point at which the planets are closest to the Sun — occur at the same time, two scenarios are possible. Mercury's orbit could be disrupted, forcing it to leave the Solar System or collide with Venus, the Sun, or the Earth. These changes will take millions of years to occur, but the researchers recreated the circumstance roughly three thousand times. Over 2,000 of them ended with planets colliding or Uranus, Neptune, or Mercury being completely evacuated from the Solar System. "The full role that stellar flybys play in the evolution of planetary systems is still being r

Japan deployed a ground-breaking black-hole tracking satellite, only to lose control of it nearly immediately due to unusual conditions. We can now see what Hitomi did before it died. When JAXA launched Hitomi in February of this year, scientists were ecstatic about what the black hole monitoring satellite would reveal about the universe's mysteries. It had barely been a month up there when something went wrong. The satellite spun out of control due to a succession of tragic occurrences caused by both human error and software problems. Despite repeated attempts to restore control, Hitomi continued to spin and launch debris into space. JAXA eventually declared that the $273 million satellite was irreparable. However, when Hitomi died, researchers also disclosed that they had scraped a small amount of data from the satellite and would be documenting it in subsequent studies. Some of that data is now available in a new report published in Nature, which includes Hitomi's final obse

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a cooperation between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency, has caught definitive evidence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a gas giant planet circling a Sun-like star 700 light years away. The result, which has been accepted for publication in Nature, provides important insights into exoplanet composition and formation and is indicative of Webb’s ability to detect and measure carbon dioxide in the thinner atmospheres of smaller rocky planets. And furthermore, a better understanding of such exoplanets could lead to the discovery of worlds that could harbor extraterrestrial life. The team that made the discovery was granted time on the telescope through the Early Science Publication Program, which was selected to collect some of Webb’s first data after its science operations began in late June Led by Natalie Batala of the University of California, Santa Cruz, the team includes astronomers from around the world, inclu

In the vast cosmic theater, where galaxies dance and stars shimmer, we, the inhabitants of a pale blue dot, are on a perpetual journey. Even if one were to remain stationary, nestled in the comforts of their home, the universe ensures that they are always in motion, traversing the vast expanse of space. Consider this: over the span of a human lifetime, even without the deliberate act of travel, one covers a staggering distance of nearly a trillion miles. This journey is not just a testament to our planet's motion but a reflection of the intricate ballet of the cosmos. Our Earth, a mere speck in the vastness, rotates on its axis, taking all its inhabitants on a daily voyage. Those residing near the equator experience the swiftest of these journeys, moving at speeds of approximately 1,000 mph. But this rotation is just the beginning. Earth, in its eternal dance, orbits the Sun, adding another 19 miles per second to our cosmic journey. Yet, the story doesn't end here. Our Sun, the

The cosmos never ceases to amaze, and our understanding of it is constantly evolving.  One of the intriguing questions that has fascinated astronomers and space enthusiasts alike is: How big can a planet get? With the discovery of exoplanets beyond our solar system, this question has taken on new dimensions. Before 1992, Jupiter, with its width about 11 times that of Earth, was considered the largest known planet. However, the discovery of exoplanets has introduced us to worlds that dwarf even Jupiter. Some of these exoplanets, often referred to as "super-Jupiters," have a radius nearly twice that of Jupiter. Solène Ulmer-Moll, an exoplanet researcher at the University of Geneva, points out that these colossal planets often orbit very close to their host stars, making them truly extreme objects in the universe. Interestingly, size and mass don't always correlate in the world of planets. For instance, the gas giant HAT-P-67 b, with a radius about twice that of Jupiter, is

In the vast cosmic ocean, where stars twinkle and galaxies spiral, there emerges a tale of an enigmatic entity, a black hole, unlike any we've known.  This newly discovered celestial wonder, nestled in the embrace of a red giant star, has been aptly named the "Unicorn" – not just for its rarity but also for its location in the constellation Monoceros, the Greek word for 'unicorn'. The "Unicorn" is a testament to the universe's capacity for wonder. It is a stellar mass black hole, weighing in at a mere three times the mass of our Sun. Such a size places it in a mysterious realm, a so-called "mass gap" between the heaviest neutron stars and the lightest black holes previously known. Black holes, these enigmatic regions of spacetime where gravity is so intense that nothing, not even light, can escape, have long captivated our imagination. Predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, they are the universe's ultimate enigmas, ho

Sometimes you see an image that’s pretty hard to believe it is not a poor attempt at Photoshop. This is one of those images. On Twitter, NASA’s  ICE team  responsible for polar research posted a bizarre picture showing an iceberg that was almost a perfect rectangle. The image was taken by NASA’s Operation IceBridge, a fleet of research aircraft that image Earth’s polar ice. The peculiar formation was seen near the  Larsen C ice shelf , a large section of which famously broke off from the Antarctic Peninsula in July 2017. You’re probably more used to seeing icebergs with odd geometric shapes. But this particular one is known as a tabular iceberg, which as their name implies have steep sides and a flat top. Speaking to  Live Science , NASA ice scientist Kelly Brunt from the University of Maryland said this particular square shape was “a bit unusual”, noting it was likely about 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) across. And while it looks flat on top, it probably has a more iceberg-like geometric sh

We don't know why a hundred thousand galaxies, including our own, are being dragged into a region of space we can't see. Astronomers refer to this as a " Gravity Anomaly ." It's a vast region of space known as " The Great Attractor ." Astronomers estimate its mass to be 100 billion Suns. More information can be found in the video below.

According to Scientific American, physicists have outdone Apple's newest iPhone by creating the most accurate image of atoms to date using a gadget that magnifies images 100 million times. With a study released last month, the researchers that broke the record for the highest resolution microscope in 2018 outdid themselves. style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7974853704" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"> The sample was visualised using an approach known as electron ptychography, in which an electron beam is fired at an object and bounces off of it to produce a scan that algorithms use to reverse engineer the above image. This technique was previously limited to imaging things that were a few atoms thick. style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2375157903127664" data-ad-slot="7974853704" d

There is something in the depths of space that continuously sends a sixteen-day cycle of signals to Earth. We have learned that a string of intricate alien signals arriving from space are not as random as we first believed. According to a recent study, a FRB source situated roughly 500 million light-years from Earth pulses on a predictable 16-day cycle. Is this the grandiose message from the aliens we've been waiting for? Experts claim that a mysterious alien signal has been discovered to cautiously repeat on a sixteen-day period. One of the most enigmatic cosmic phenomena to be uncovered in the twenty-first century is fast radio bursts. We've just just begun to examine and comprehend the signals, and we're still looking for their precise source and understanding their origin. FRBs have been described as a natural cosmic event by some, while others have dared to assert that they may be the conclusive proof of extraterrestrial life that we have all been seeking. Recently, VI

In the vast tapestry of the cosmos, where stars shimmer and galaxies dance, there emerges a beacon of light, a testament to the universe’s ancient past. This beacon, named Earendel, is a star that has journeyed through the eons, its light traversing 12.9 billion years, reaching out to us from a time when the universe was but a child. The James Webb Space Telescope, our sentinel in the vastness of space, has captured a breathtaking image of Earendel. This star, residing in the Sunrise Arc galaxy, is more than a mere point of light. It is a massive B-type star, radiating with a luminosity a million times that of our Sun, and burning at temperatures twice as hot. But how, one might wonder, can we perceive such a distant star? The answer lies in the fabric of space-time itself. A colossal cluster of galaxies, positioned between Earendel and us, has created a wrinkle in space-time. This cluster, with its immense gravitational force, acts as a cosmic magnifying glass, bending and amplifying

In the vast cosmic arena, where stars are born and galaxies collide, there lies a story of a distant exoplanet named Beta Pictoris b.  Orbiting its luminous star, this celestial body, 12 times the mass of Jupiter, offers us a profound understanding of the universe's intricate ballet. Imagine, if you will, the entirety of 17 years condensed into a mere 10-second time-lapse. This is not the work of science fiction but a testament to human curiosity and our ever-evolving technological prowess. Through the lenses of the Gemini Observatory and the European Southern Observatory, we witness the mesmerizing dance of Beta Pictoris b around its star. A dance that takes place at a distance tenfold that between our Earth and the Sun. This exoplanetary system, located in the constellation Pictor, is approximately 63 light-years away from our blue dot. The star, Beta Pictoris, shines with a luminosity 8.7 times greater than our Sun and is relatively young, with an age between 20 to 26 million ye