Category Astronomy/Space

An artist illustration of the InSight lander on Mars. InSight, short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, is designed to give the Red Planet its first thorough check up since it formed 4.5 billion years ago. The mission will look for tectonic activity and meteorite impacts, study how much heat is still flowing through the planet, and track Mars’ wobble as it orbits the sun. While InSight is a Mars mission, it’s more than a Mars mission. InSight will help answer key questions about the formation of the rocky planets of the solar system.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The touchdown marks the eighth time NASA has successfully landed a spacecraft on Mars. Mars has just received its newest robotic resident...

The small, cool M dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 and its seven worlds. New research from the University of Washington speculates on possible climates of these worlds and how they may have evolved.
Credit: NASA

Not all stars are like the sun, so not all planetary systems can be studied with the same expectations. New research from a University of Washington-led team of astronomers gives updated climate models for the seven planets around the star TRAPPIST-1. The work also could help astronomers more effectively study planets around stars unlike our sun, and better use the limited, expensive resources of the James Webb Space Telescope, now expected to launch in 2021.

“We are modeling unfamiliar atmospheres, not just assuming that the things we see in the solar system will look the same way around anot...

This is an artist’s impression based on published scientific data on the HR 8799 solar system. The magenta, HR 8799c planet is in the foreground. Compared to Jupiter, this gas giant is about seven times more massive and has a radius that is 20 percent larger. HR 8799c’s planetary companions, d and b are in the background, orbiting their host star. Credit: W. M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko/C. Alvarez

Researchers are perfecting technology to one day look for signs of alien life. Astronomers have gleaned some of the best data yet on the composition of a planet known as HR 8799c – a young giant gas planet about 7 times the mass of Jupiter that orbits its star every 200 years.

The team used state-of-the art instrumentation at the W. M...

This is an image of Apep captured at 8 microns in the thermal infrared with the VISIR camera on the European Southern Observatory’s VLT telescope, Mt Paranal, Chile.
Credit: University of Sydney/European Southern Observatory

Finding raises new questions about ‘star deaths’. An international team of scientists has discovered a new, massive star system – one that also challenges existing theories of how large stars eventually die.

“This system is likely the first of its kind ever discovered in our own galaxy,” says Benjamin Pope, a NASA Sagan fellow at New York University’s Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics and one of the researchers.

Specifically, the scientists detected a gamma-ray burst progenitor system – a type of supernova that blasts out an extremely powerful and narrow jet of ...