Category Astronomy/Space

Red supergiants are a class of star that end their lives in supernova explosions. Their lifecycles are not fully understood, partly due to difficulties in measuring their temperatures. For the first time, astronomers develop an accurate method to determine the surface temperatures of red supergiants.

Stars come in a wide range of sizes, masses and compositions. Our sun is considered a relatively small specimen, especially when compared to something like Betelgeuse which is known as a red supergiant...

Researchers have detected cosmic pipelines supplying the cold gases necessary for the formation of massive galaxies and the creation of stars. It is the first direct observational evidence of the phenomenon in the early universe.

To come into being, galaxies need a steady diet of cold gases to undergo gravitational collapse. The larger the galaxy, the more cold gas it needs to coalesce and to grow.

Massive galaxies found in the early universe needed a lot of cold gas — a store totaling as much as 10...

Volcanic rock samples collected during NASA’s Apollo missions bear the isotopic signature of key events in the early evolution of the Moon, a new analysis found. Those events include the formation of the Moon’s iron core, as well as the crystallization of the lunar magma ocean — the sea of molten rock thought to have covered the Moon for around 100 million years after the it formed.

The analysis, published in the journal Science Advances, used a technique called secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) to study volcanic glasses returned from the Apollo 15 and 17 missions, which are thought to represent some of the most primitive volcanic material on the Moon...

Research finds that airborne dust plumes are produced by sliding blocks of dry ice each spring. A Southwest Research Institute® (SwRI®) scientist examined 11 Mars years of image data to understand the seasonal processes that create linear gullies on the slopes of the megadune in the Russell crater on Mars...