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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Geologic Age of Finsen Crater on Far Side of the Moon found to be 3.5 billion years

    September 8, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Geologic age of Finsen Crater on far side of the moon found to be 3.5 billion years
    Context map of Chang’e-4 landing site. Credit: AIR

    The absolute model age (AMA), or geologic age of Finsen crater on the moon’s far side is determined to be about 3.5 billion years (Ga) based on crater counting method, according to a study published in Icarus.

    The study was conducted by a research team led by Prof. Di Kaichang from the State Key Laboratory of Remote Sensing Sciences, Aerospace Information Research Institute (AIR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

    Based on this model age, the regolith growth rate at the Chang’e-4 landing site and the crater degradation rate within Finsen crater have also been estimated.

    China’s Chang’e-4 probe, including a lander and a rover, successfully touched down the floor of Von Kármán crater within the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) bas...

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    Peculiar Planetary System Architecture around 3 Orion Stars explained

    September 8, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    New observations of GW Orionis, a triple star system with a peculiar inner region, revealed that this object has a warped planet-forming disk with a misaligned ring. The image on the right is from the SPHERE instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, which allowed astronomers to see, for the first time, the shows this ring casts on the rest of the disk. This helped the researchers figure out the 3D shape of the ring and the overall disk. The left panel shows an artistic impression of the disk’s inner region, including the ring, which is based on the 3D shape reconstructed by the team. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada, Exeter/Kraus et al.

    The discovery that our galaxy is teeming with exoplanets has also revealed the vast diversity of planetary systems out there a...

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    An unexpected -Origin story for a Lopsided Black hole merger

    September 5, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    black holes merging

    Researchers suggest a novel process to explain the collision of a large black hole and a much smaller one. A lopsided merger of two black holes may have an oddball origin story, according to a new study by researchers at MIT and elsewhere.

    The merger was first detected on April 12, 2019 as a gravitational wave that arrived at the detectors of both LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory), and its Italian counterpart, Virgo. Scientists labeled the signal as GW190412 and determined that it emanated from a clash between two David-and-Goliath black holes, one three times more massive than the other. The signal marked the first detection of a merger between two black holes of very different sizes.

    Now the new study, published today in the journal Physical Review...

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    Has Earth’s Oxygen Rusted the Moon for Billions of Years?

    September 4, 2020, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Enhanced map of hematite (red color near poles) on Moon using a spheric projection, nearside only.
    Enhanced map of hematite (red) on Moon using a spheric projection (nearside only). Credit: Shuai Li

    To the surprise of many planetary scientists, the oxidized iron mineral hematite has been discovered at high latitudes on the Moon, according to a study published today in Science Advances led by Shuai Li, assistant researcher at the Hawai’i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST).

    Iron is highly reactive with oxygen – forming reddish rust commonly seen on Earth. The lunar surface and interior, however, are virtually devoid of oxygen, so pristine metallic iron is prevalent on the Moon and highly oxidized iron has not been confirmed in samples returned from the Apollo missions...

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