Items tagged with astronomy
An international team of researchers is calling a stunning fireball from the most distant region of the Solar System a game changer. The meteor that was spotted over Alberta, Canada last year is challenging the currently favored Solar System formation models.
The Oort Cloud is a group of celestial bodies that begin...
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In order to celebrate the release of it's asteroid toolkit, the European Space Agency (ESA) has issued a challenge to find a mystery asteroid. The Christmas asteroid poses no threat to Earth, but the agency says it does not know much about 2015 RN35, which presents an opportunity for learning more about...
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The cosmos' holiday gift of the Geminid meteor shower is upon us, with its peak on December 14, 2022. During the peak, skywatchers can hopefully expect 30-40 meteors per hour in the Northern Hemisphere, and up to 150 if one is lucky enough to have perfect weather conditions for viewing.
The Geminid meteor shower...
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NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has reached yet another milestone, as it has discovered the earliest galaxies confirmed to date. The galaxies that were unveiled date back to less than 400 million years after the big bang.
The Webb telescope has been busy since its launch earlier this year, from revealing...
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A group of astronomers sorted through 200,000 images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in order to look for any residual background glow in the sky. The highly-ambitious project called SKYSURF, found an extremely small amount of excess light, equivalent to the "steady glow of 10 fireflies spread across the entire...
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A team of astrophysicists has upended a long-held belief that long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) only resulted from the collapse of massive stars. A new study, led by Northwestern University, presents new evidence indicating at least some long GRBs can also result from neutron star mergers, previously thought to only...
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A team of researchers at the University of Alberta has found two minerals never before seen on Earth in a slice of a 15-ton meteorite. The slice came from the ninth-largest meteorite ever found.
Skywatchers love watching falling stars light up the night sky. Most burn up as they enter Earth's atmosphere and never...
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New evidence points to the Andromeda galaxy being a cannibal that has been growing with intermittent feasts of smaller galaxies. An international team of scientists recently published a paper with the findings of two honor students.
A team of scientists led by a University of Sydney astrophysicist has discovered a...
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A new map has been created which allows users to investigate the entire observable universe with pinpoint accuracy for the first time ever. The gorgeous compilation was pieced together using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey by astronomers at Johns Hopkins University mined over the last two decades.
Scientists...
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A NASA-funded team has created a new model that explains the scarcity of planets with masses between super-Earths and mini-Neptunes. The new model aims to explain two puzzling observations that continually appear among the more than 3,800 planetary systems cataloged to date.
As scientists and astronomers...
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An intermediate-mass black hole was recently discovered devouring an unsuspecting star that got a bit too close, producing a flair of radiation that outshined even the combined stellar light of the host dwarf galaxy. The destruction of the star is known as a "tidal disruption event", or TDE, and could help scientists...
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The Moon will be entering the Earth's shadow this month, creating a spectacular total lunar eclipse, called a "Blood Moon." If you miss catching this event while it's happening live, it will be another three years before another total lunar eclipse will occur.
A lunar eclipse occurs when the Sun, Earth, and Moon...
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An international team has identified a very large atomic gas structure which spans nearly 2 million light-years in a region around a famous quintet of galaxies. The team used the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) 19-beam receiver to unveil the atomic gas around Stephan's Quintet.
Stephan's...
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Sky watchers are in for a treat later this week, as the Orionid meteor shower is expected to provide a fantastic light show in the sky. This particular meteor shower is compliments of perhaps the most famous space rock, Halley's Comet.
The Orionid meteor shower is a product of the inbound leg of Halley's Comet. The...
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Scientists have discovered that near-Earth asteroid Phaethon has a measured change in its rotation period. Phaethon is just the 11th asteroid to be found with this unique feature, and its the largest of the group.
NASA's DART mission recently flew into asteroid Dimorphos, in a test to see if it is possible to...
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Researchers have created a map of the Milky Way's ancient dead past, revealing the resting place of stars that have since passed away. In fact, the study unveiled a massive eerie graveyard that stretches three times the height of our own Milky Way.
The Milky Way as we know it is a crowded space. A black hole...
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A team of researchers have created the first ever computer generated 3D model of the Cat's Eye Nebula, and it is simply purrrfect. The new image also reveals a pair of symmetric rings that encircle the nebula's outer shell.
The Cat's Eye Nebula is one of the most complex planetary nebula currently known. It lies...
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9/26/2022 Update
As a reminder, Jupiter's closest pass to Earth is tonight, so don't miss the opportunity to see it! It is a busy night for space as the NASA DART mission is reaching its conclusion this evening as well. Original story below...
Jupiter will be in opposition to the Sun later this month, presenting an...
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New research seems to indicate a giant gas bubble is circling the Milky Way's supermassive black hole. Astronomers believe the hot bubble of gas is about the size of the planet Mercury, and makes a full lap around the black hole in just 70 minutes. "This requires a mind-blowing velocity of about 30 percent of the...
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The remnants of an exploded white dwarf star are serving as a learning tool for astronomers. The supernova remnant, known as SNR 0519-69.0 (SNR 0519 for short) is the result of debris from a white dwarf star explosion.
It is believed that the dwarf star in question reached a critical mass, "either by pulling matter...
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The Hubble Space Telescope continues to capture dazzling images from space, as it catches an intimate cosmic dance of two intertwined spiral galaxies. The two galaxies are located more than a billion light-years from Earth.
The European Space Agency (ESA) recently shared an image of two overlapping spiral galaxies...
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People around the world were privy to a gorgeous Harvest Moon over the weekend. Unlike other full moons, the Harvest full Moon rises into the night sky around the same time for several evenings in a row.
The Moon has been in the headlines in the recent weeks, as NASA has unsuccessfully attempted to launch its first...
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