Category Astronomy/Space

In a slow moving universe, asteroids give us a rare chance to see things moving in real time. On the evening of Tuesday, January 18, 1.1-kilometer asteroid (7482) 1994 PC1 passed 1.23 million miles (1.98 million kilometers) from the Earth. This is about five times the distance from the Earth to the moon, and just a shade over the distance to the anti-sunward Earth-sun Lagrange 2 point, soon to be the home of the James Webb Space Telescope.

Fortunately, both the Earth and said space telescope are safe from the asteroid on this pass, and will remain so for centuries in to the foreseeable future. The asteroid was discovered on the night of August 9, 1994 by astronomer Robert McNaught observing from the Siding Spring Observatory...

Using the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), astronomers have observed the globular cluster Messier 14 and its peculiar multiple stellar populations. Results of the observational campaign, published January 7 on arXiv.org, deliver important insight into the nature of this cluster.

Globular clusters (GCs) are collections of tightly bound stars orbiting galaxies. Astronomers perceive them as natural laboratories enabling studies on the evolution of stars and galaxies. In particular, globular clusters could help researchers better understand the formation history and evolution of early type galaxies, as the origin of GCs seems to be closely linked to periods of intense star formation.

At a distance of about 30,300 light years away fr...

Astronomers have found three Jupiter-like exoplanets that are dangerously close to being ‘swallowed up’ by their host stars. The discovery gives new insight into how planetary systems evolve over time, helping to reveal the fate of solar systems like our own.

Three newly-discovered planets have been orbiting dangerously close to stars nearing the end of their lives...

Researchers find high-energy oxygen and sulfur ions in Jupiter’s inner radiation belts — and a previously unknown ion source. Nearly 20 years after the end of NASA’s Galileo mission to Jupiter, scientists led by the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany have unlocked a new secret from the mission’s extensive data sets. For the first time, the research team was able to determine beyond doubt that the high-energy ions surrounding the gas giant as part of its inner radiation belt are primarily oxygen and sulfur ions...