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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Remote Sensing Data sheds light on when and how asteroid Ryugu lost its Water

    January 6, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Rocks on Ryugu, a ‘rubble pile’ near-Earth asteroid recently visited by Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft, appear to have lost much of their water before they came together to form the asteroid, new research suggests.

    Last month, Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission brought home a cache of rocks collected from near-Earth asteroid Ryugu. While analysis of those returned samples is just getting underway, researchers are using data from the spacecraft’s other instruments to reveal new details about the asteroid’s past.

    In a study published in Nature Astronomy, researchers offer an explanation for why Ryugu isn’t quite as rich in water-bearing minerals as some other asteroids...

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    BISTRO explores complex Magnetic Field structure of Cat’s Paw Nebula

    January 5, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    An international team of astronomers has investigated a nearby emission nebula and star-forming region dubbed the Cat’s Paw Nebula as part of the B-field In STar-forming Region Observations (BISTRO) survey. Results of this study, presented in a paper published December 24 on arXiv.org, provide essential information about the structure of the object’s complex magnetic field.

    At a distance of some 4,240 light years away, the Cat’s Paw Nebula (other designations: NGC 6334, Gum 64) is a high-mass star-forming complex that lies within the galactic plane. The nebula has a form of a filamentary cloud structure spanning 1,000 light years and hosts several star-forming regions.

    Observations show that NGC 6334 is dominated by both a dense ridge threaded by sub-filaments, and by two hub-li...

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    A Giant Black Hole keeps Evading Detection and scientists can’t explain it

    January 3, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This composite image of the galaxy cluster Abell 2261 contains optical data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Japan's Subaru Telescope showing galaxies in the cluster and in the background, and data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory showing hot gas (colored pink) pervading the cluster. The middle of the image shows the large elliptical galaxy in the center of the cluster.
    This composite image of the galaxy cluster Abell 2261 contains optical data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Japan’s Subaru Telescope showing galaxies in the cluster and in the background, and data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory showing hot gas (colored pink) pervading the cluster. The middle of the image shows the large elliptical galaxy in the center of the cluster.
    (Image: © X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ of Michigan/K. Gültekin; Optical: NASA/STScI/NAOJ/Subaru; Infrared: NSF/NOAO/KPNO)

    An enormous black hole keeps slipping through astronomers’ nets. Supermassive black holes are thought to lurk at the hearts of most, if not all, galaxies...

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    Hubble Releases a New Image of Neptune, Revealing a Rapidly Shifting Storm

    January 1, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Annotated view of Neptune with two dark spots. Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), and L.A. Sromovsky and P.M. Fry (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

    Storms on Neptune seem to follow a pattern of forming, strengthening and then dissipating over the course of about two Earth years. But a Neptunian storm spotted in the planet’s atmosphere over two years ago has done something quite different: it has reversed course and is still going strong.

    The storm, which is wider than the Atlantic Ocean, originated in the planet’s northern hemisphere and seen with the Hubble Space Telescope in 2018. Observations a year later showed that it began drifting southward toward the equator, where previous similar whirling storms went to die...

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