Items tagged with astronomy
A team of astronomers has discovered a rare Earth-mass exoplanet orbiting in the habitable zone of a star. Exoplanet Wolf 1069 b and the star it orbits, Wolf 1069, are located approximately 31 light-years from Earth.
Finding an exoplanet that is within the habitable zone of a nearby star is exceptionally difficult...
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A Northwestern University astrophysicist has produced a stunning video of four planets dancing around their sun. The tantalizing planetary dance was made using observations over a 12-year period.
The four exoplanets tripping the light fantastic were among the first ever to be directly imaged, a discovery made in...
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Some nighttime sky watchers will be privy to seeing a lunar occultation tonight, as the Moon passes in front of Mars. While the viewing of the occultation will be limited, many others will still be able to witness a conjunction or close approach of the pair of celestial objects.
A lunar occultation happens when the...
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Astronomers utilizing the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India, have detected a signal with a lookback time of a phenomenal 8.8 billion years. The radio signal originated from the most distant galaxy so far at a specific wavelength known as the 21 cm line. This is the first instance a radio signal of this...
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New research indicates that something is awry within the Butterfly Nebula, also known as NGC 6302. A team of astronomers at the University of Washington found "dramatic changes in the material within the wings," after comparing two pictures captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 2009 and 2020. The team shared...
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A team of scientists has unveiled the secret to a burping black hole with the Green Bank Telescope (GBT). The new study reveals new information about mysterious radio bubbles surrounding a supermassive black hole.
Supermassive black holes are tremendously dense objects buried in the hearts of galaxies, while...
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Skywatchers will be able to view all the planets in our Solar System on the same night. Those wanting to get an early sneak peek can join a live broadcast by The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0 later today.
December has been chock full of celestial events for skywatchers to enjoy. Those who love to admire the Moon...
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A team of astronomers has detected evidence that two exoplanets 218 light-years from Earth are "water worlds." The two planets orbit a red dwarf star in the constellation Lyra, unlike any planets in our solar system.
According to a newly published research paper, two exoplanets, which are about one and a half times...
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NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) captured a stunning image of one of the first medium-deep wide-field images of the cosmos, including a region of the sky known as the North Ecliptic Pole. The image is part of the Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science (PEARLS) GTO program.
A...
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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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