NASA to Provide Latest Update in the Hunt for Habitable Planets Beyond Our Solar System
NASA is ready to reveal the latest discoveries by the powerful Kepler space telescope which scans for planets outside our solar system. The space agency says it will stream its news live on Monday, June 19, at 11am EDT. We got news for you! Hear from experts about the latest results from our search for distant worlds on June 19: … Continue reading
Astronomers Reveal Secrets of TRAPPIST-1 System; Planets Similar to Earth
An astrophysics researcher, Billy Quarles, has identified the possible compositions of the seven planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. By studying the compositions of “thousands of numerical simulations to identify the planets stable for millions of years, Quarles concluded that six of the seven planets are consistent with an Earth-like composition,” science journal Phy.org reported. The exception is TRAPPIST-1f, which has … Continue reading
Chance of Asteroid Colliding With Earth Higher than Previously Thought
The likelihood of an asteroid smashing into Earth is increasing, according to new research from a team of Czech scientists which discovered new asteroids traveling around our planet. The team studied 144 large meteors from the Taurids, a meteor stream which appears in our skies twice a year. The group discovered a new branch of the phenomenon containing at least … Continue reading
A New Moon Mission is Part of NASA’s Mars Plan
A group of astronauts may spend a year in orbit around the moon in the late 2020s as part of NASA’s plan to send humans to Mars in the 2030s, agency officials said. Greg Williams, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for policy and plans in the agency’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, spoke today at the Humans to Mars Summit … Continue reading
While Looking for PLANET X Astronomers Discover Two NEW Moons Around Jupiter
The advent of monster telescopes equipped with super-sensitive, wide-field detectors has been a boon for astronomical discoveries, among them a bevy of tiny moonlets around the outer planets. For example, observations made from 2000 to 2003 yielded 46 moons around Jupiter — more than two-thirds of the planet’s total! Now astronomer Scott Sheppard (Carnegie Institution for Science) has added two … Continue reading
Citizen Scientists Discover New ‘World’ Near Sun
A new citizen-science tool released earlier this year to help astronomers pinpoint new worlds lurking in the outer reaches of our solar system has already led to a discovery: a brown dwarf a little more than 100 light years away from the Sun. Just six days after the launch of the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 website in February, four different … Continue reading
Quasars Help Astronomers Create the Largest Map of the Universe Yet
Astronomers with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have created the first map of the large-scale structure of the Universe based entirely on the positions of quasars. Quasars are the incredibly bright and distant points of light powered by supermassive black holes. “Because quasars are so bright, we can see them all the way across the Universe,” said Ashley Ross … Continue reading
Sudden Disappearance of Star Perplexes Scientists
A giant star named N6946-BH1, which American astronomers have observed for several years, has suddenly disappeared, NASA’s website wrote, referring to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The specialists don’t know the exact reasons behind the disappearance of the star. The most probable hypothesis is that the star has turned into a black hole. The scientists, who observed … Continue reading
New Impact Flash Observed on Jupiter
Jupiter just got beaned for the 5th time! On the evening of May 26, between 19:24.6 UT and 19:26.2 UT, Sauveur Pedranghelu, a French amateur from Corsica, detected a impact flash live on video in Jupiter’s north polar region. The flash was very brief, lasting only about 0.7 second, and displayed two brightness peaks. A bright dot — about the … Continue reading
Five Asteroids Will Cruise by Earth in the Next Year, And One Will Be Coming Very Close
There’s so many cool things to see out in space — from gorgeous views of Jupiter to stunning glimpses of Saturn, and a star that might have aliens hanging out nearby — that it’s easy to forget that it’s actually a pretty hostile place. We’re reminded of that whenever NASA alerts the world that an asteroid is making a close … Continue reading
