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    Category Astronomy/Space

    TESS discovers its third new planet, with longest orbit yet

    January 9, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space


    • NASA’s TESS mission, which will survey the entire sky over the next two years, has already discovered three new exoplanets around nearby stars.
      Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, edited by MIT News

    Measurements indicate a dense, gaseous, ‘sub-Neptune’ world, three times the size of Earth. NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, TESS, has discovered a third small planet outside our solar system, scientists announced this week at the annual American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.

    The new planet, named HD 21749b, orbits a bright, nearby dwarf star about 53 light years away, in the constellation Reticulum, and appears to have the longest orbital period of the three planets so far identified by TESS...

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    Hubble takes Gigantic Image of the Triangulum Galaxy

    January 8, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This gigantic image of the Triangulum Galaxy – also known as Messier 33 – is a composite of about 54 different pointings with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys. With a staggering size of 34 372 times 19 345 pixels, it is the second-largest image ever released by Hubble. It is only dwarfed by the image of the Andromeda Galaxy, released in 2016.
    Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Durbin, J. Dalcanton, and B. F. Williams (University of Washington)

    The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the most detailed image yet of a close neighbour of the Milky Way – the Triangulum Galaxy, a spiral galaxy located at a distance of only 3 million light-years...

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    Catastrophic Galactic Collision could send Solar System flying into space

    January 6, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Photo of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds over a smoking volcano at Bromo Semeru Tengger National Park, Java, Indonesia
    Here are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, from Gilbert Vancell Nature Photography in November 2018

    New research led by astrophysicists at Durham University, UK, predicts that the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) could hit the Milky Way in two billion years’ time. The collision could occur much earlier than the predicted impact between the Milky Way and another neighbouring galaxy, Andromeda, which scientists say will hit our galaxy in eight billion years.

    The catastrophic coming together with the Large Magellanic Cloud could wake up our galaxy’s dormant black hole, which would begin devouring surrounding gas and increase in size by up to ten times.

    As it feeds, the now-active black hole would throw out high-energy radiation and while these cosmic fireworks are unlikely to a...

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    Tiny satellites could be ‘Guide Stars’ for huge next-generation Telescopes

    January 6, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    In the coming decades, massive segmented space telescopes may be launched to peer even closer in on far-out exoplanets and their atmospheres. To keep these mega-scopes stable, MIT researchers say that small satellites can follow along, and act as “guide stars,” by pointing a laser back at a telescope to calibrate the system, to produce better, more accurate images of distant worlds. In the coming decades, massive segmented space telescopes may be launched to peer even closer in on far-out exoplanets and their atmospheres. To keep these mega-scopes stable, MIT researchers say that small satellites can follow along, and act as “guide stars,” by pointing a laser back at a telescope to calibrate the system, to produce better, more accurate images of distant worlds.
    Credit: Christine D...
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