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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Astronomers pinpoint the location of the brightest fast radio burst to date

    September 25, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Artist’s rendition of CHIME/FRB and its Outriggers localizing FRB 20250316A/ RBFLOAT.
    Artist’s rendition of CHIME/FRB and its Outriggers localizing FRB 20250316A/ RBFLOAT. Inset: The host galaxy (NGC 4141) as imaged by MMT Observatory (PI: Yuxin (Vic) Dong), illustrating the location of the FRB within a spiral arm of NGC 4141.Photo credit: Daniëlle Futselaar/MMT Observatory.

    An international collaboration of astronomers, including researchers from the University of Toronto, have detected the brightest Fast Radio Burst (FRB) to date—and have been able to pinpoint its location in a nearby galaxy by using a network of radio telescopes.

    FRBs are extremely energetic flashes from distant sources from across the universe that are caused by extreme astrophysical phenomena...

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    Chandra finds black hole that’s growing at 2.4 times the Eddington limit

    September 24, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    An artist's concept of a supermassive black hole, a surrounding disk of material falling towards the black hole and a jet containing particles moving away at close to the speed of light. This black hole represents a recently-discovered quasar powered by a black hole. New Chandra observations indicate that the black hole is growing at a rate that exceeds the usual limit for black holes, called the Eddington Limit. Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/M. Weiss
    An artist’s concept of a supermassive black hole, a surrounding disk of material falling towards the black hole and a jet containing particles moving away at close to the speed of light. This black hole represents a recently-discovered quasar powered by a black hole. New Chandra observations indicate that the black hole is growing at a rate that exceeds the usual limit for black holes, called the Eddington Limit. Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO/M. Weiss
    X-ray: NASA/CXC/INAF-Brera/L. Ighina et al.; Illustration: NASA/CXC/SAO/M. Weiss; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/N. Wolk

    A black hole is growing at one of the fastest rates ever recorded, according to a team of astronomers...

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    Galaxies Reveal Hidden Maps of Dark Matter in the Early Universe

    September 21, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Rutgers researchers uncover “fingerprints” that show how these cosmic systems expand and evolve

    A Rutgers-led team of scientists has uncovered evidence of how galaxies expand by tracing the invisible scaffolding of the universe created by a mysterious substance known as dark matter.

    In a newly published study in Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers used what they said are the largest-ever samples of special galaxies called Lyman-alpha emitters to study how galaxies clumped together over billions of years. In doing so, they gained an improved understanding of how galaxies relate to the surrounding dark matter and how they evolve over time.

    “Analyzing these fingerprints gives us insight into the mass of dark matter surrounding the galaxies,” said Eric Gawiser, a Disti...

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    NASA’s Deep Space communications demo exceeds project expectations

    September 19, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A wide-angle, long-exposure shot of an astronomical observatory on a hill at night. The dome glows with a faint green light against a deep purple and blue sky filled with stars. Dark silhouettes of pine trees are visible in the foreground.
    In this infrared photograph, the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory at JPL’s Table Mountain Facility near Wrightwood, California, beams its eight-laser beacon to the Deep Space Optical Communications flight laser transceiver aboard NASA’s Psyche spacecraft.
     Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

    NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications technology has successfully shown that data encoded in lasers can be reliably transmitted, received, and decoded after traveling millions of miles from Earth at distances comparable to Mars. Nearly two years after launching aboard the agency’s Psyche mission in 2023, the technology demonstration recently completed its 65th and final pass, sending a laser signal to Psyche and receiving the return signal from 218 million miles away.

    “NASA is setting Ame...

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