SpaceCAL 3D printer on VSS Unity, awaiting launch on June 8, 2024. Credit: Virgin Galactic Imagine a crew of astronauts headed to Mars. About 140 million miles away from Earth,…
Category: Space
Astronomers are helping to build the world’s largest telescope
In 2014, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) began constructing the world’s largest telescope, the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), in Chile’s Atacama Desert, 3,000 metres above sea level. The giant eye on…
Small, cool and sulfurous exoplanet may help write recipe for planetary formation
A surprising yellow haze of sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere of a gas “dwarf” exoplanet about 96 light years away from our own solar system makes the planet a prime…
Scholars review lunar crater chronology and impact flux
Locations of samples returned from the Moon. Model ages of mare deposits [1] were based on superposed crater densities and the Neukum crater chronology [23]. The Moon had a much…
Cosmic simulation reveals how black holes grow and evolve
This still from the simulation shows a supermassive black hole, or quasar, surrounded by a swirling disk of material called an accretion disk. Credit: Caltech/Phil Hopkins group A team of…
New habitable Earth-sized planet only 40 lightyears away with the same temperature as the 2022 UK heatwave
Scientists from the University of Warwick have helped discover a new habitable Earth-sized planet– only a short 40 light years away. In this artist’s concept, Gliese 12 b is shown…
Shocked quartz reveals evidence of historical cosmic airburst
Shocked quartz and amorphous silica The researchers are particularly interested in the presence of shocked quartz, indicated by a pattern of lines, called lamellae, that shows stress great enough to…
A hero, a crown, and possibly a nova
Look up after sunset during summer months to find Hercules! Scan between Vega and Arcturus, near the distinct pattern of Corona Borealis. Once you find its stars, use binoculars or…
Webb captures star clusters in Cosmic Gems arc
An international team of astronomers used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to discover gravitationally bound star clusters when the Universe was 460 million years old. This is the first…
