Category Astronomy/Space

About the size of a full-size pickup truck, a newly launched satellite by NASA and its partners will provide ocean and atmospheric information to improve hurricane forecasts, help protect infrastructure, and benefit commercial activities, such as shipping.

The Sentinel-6B satellite lifted off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in central California at 9:21 p.m. PST on Nov. 16. Contact between the satellite and a ground station in northern Canada occurred about 1 hour and 30 minutes later at 10:54 p.m...

Scientists have finally confirmed a powerful coronal mass ejection from another star, using LOFAR radio data paired with XMM-Newton’s Xray insights. The eruption blasted into space at extraordinary speeds, strong enough to strip atmospheres from close-orbiting worlds. This suggests planets around active red dwarfs may be far less hospitable than hoped.

Astronomers working with the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton observatory and the LOFAR radio telescope have obtained clear evidence of a violent burst of material hurled into space by a distant star. The outflow was strong enough that any nearby planet in its path would likely have its atmosphere stripped away.

This burst was identified as a coronal mass ejection (CME), a typ...

A nearby super-Earth may be one of the best chances yet to search for life beyond our solar system. A newly detected super-Earth just 20 light-years away is giving scientists one of the most promising chances yet to search for life beyond our solar system. The discovery of the exoplanet orbiting in the habitable zone of its star was made possible by advanced spectrographs designed at Penn State and by decades of observations from telescopes around the world.

A possible “supe...

Cloud cover is bad for picnics and for viewing stars through a telescope. But an exoplanet with dense or even total cloud cover could help astronomers search for signs of life beyond our planet.

Cornell researchers have created the first reflectance spectra—a color-coded key—of diverse, colorful microorganisms that live in the clouds floating above Earth’s surface. Astronomers don’t know if these bacteria exist elsewhere in the universe and in enough abundance to be detected by telescopes; on Earth they are not. But now, astronomers can use the color key in the search for life outside our world—making an exoplanet’s clouds, in addition to its surface and air, a promising realm for finding signs of life.

“There is a vibrant community of microorganisms in our atmosphere that...