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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Astronomers find Webb Data Conflict with Reionization Models

    October 12, 2024, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Astronomers Find JWST Data Conflicts with Reionization Models
    Simulation of galaxies ionizing hydrogen gas (bright areas) during the epoch of Reionization. Credit: M. Alvarez, R. Kaehler, and T. Abel / European Southern Observatory (ESO).

    Reionization is a critical period when the first stars and galaxies changed the physical structure of their surroundings, and eventually the entire universe. Established theories state that this epoch ended around 1 billion years after the Big Bang. However, if calculating this milestone using observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), reionization would have ended at least 350 million years earlier than expected. That’s according to a new paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters.

    Throughout its history, the universe has undergone several major changes...

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    NASA’s Hubble watches Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Behave Like a Stress Ball

    October 11, 2024, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Astronomers have observed Jupiter’s legendary Great Red Spot (GRS), an anticyclone large enough to swallow Earth, for at least 150 years. But there are always new surprises — especially when NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope takes a close-up look at it.

    Hubble’s new observations of the famous red storm, collected 90 days between December 2023 to March 2024, reveal that the GRS is not as stable as it might look. The recent data show the GRS jiggling like a bowl of gelatin. The combined Hubble images allowed astronomers to assemble a time-lapse movie of the squiggly behavior of the GRS.

    “While we knew its motion varies slightly in its longitude, we didn’t expect to see the size oscillate...

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    New Insights into how Mars became Uninhabitable

    October 9, 2024, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Artist concept image of an early wet Mars.
    This is an artist’s concept of an early Mars with liquid water (blue areas) on its surface. Ancient regions on Mars bear signs of abundant water – such as features resembling valleys and deltas, and minerals that only form in the presence of liquid water. Scientists think that billions of years ago, the atmosphere of Mars was much denser and warm enough to form rivers, lakes, and perhaps even oceans of water. As the planet cooled and lost its global magnetic field, the solar wind and solar storms eroded away to space a significant amount of the planet’s atmosphere, turning Mars into the cold, arid desert we see today.
    NASA/MAVEN/The Lunar and Planetary Institute

    NASA’s Curiosity rover, currently exploring Gale crater on Mars, is providing new details about how the ancient Martian clim...

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    Space Oddity: Most Distant Rotating Disc Galaxy found

    October 8, 2024, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Researchers have discovered the most distant Milky-Way-like galaxy yet observed. Dubbed REBELS-25, this disc galaxy seems as orderly as present-day galaxies, but we see it as it was when the Universe was only 700 million years old. This is surprising since, according to our current understanding of galaxy formation, such early galaxies are expected to appear more chaotic. The rotation and structure of REBELS-25 were revealed using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner.

    The galaxies we see today have come a long way from their chaotic, clumpy counterparts that astronomers typically observe in the early Universe...

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