Category Astronomy/Space

NWA 11119 is an unusual light-green fusion crust, silica mineral-rich achondrite meteorite.
Credit: UNM Institute of Meteoritics

Scientists believe the solar system was formed some 4.6 billion years ago when a cloud of gas and dust collapsed under gravity possibly triggered by cataclysmic explosion from a nearby massive star or supernova. As this cloud collapsed, it formed a spinning disk with the sun in the center. Since then scientists have been able to establish the formation of the solar system piece by piece. Now, new research has enabled scientists from The University of New Mexico, Arizona State University and NASA’s Johnson Space Center to add another piece to that puzzle with the discovery of the oldest-ever dated igneous meteorite.

The research titled, Silica-rich volcanism in the...

A sequence was compiled from a series of images taken on July 25 by the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. The angular extent of the widest field of view is six degrees. Visible in the images are the comet C/2018 N1, asteroids, variable stars, asteroids and reflected light from Mars. TESS is expected to find thousands of planets around other nearby stars. Download animated GIF: 
Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology/NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Before NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) started science operations on July 25, 2018, the planet hunter sent back a stunning sequence of serendipitous images showing the motion of a comet...

Illustration of the early solar disk, with an inset image of a blue hibonite crystal, one of the first minerals to form in the Solar System. Credit: © Field Museum, University of Chicago, NASA, ESA, and E. Feild (STScl).

By examining tiny blue crystals trapped inside meteorites, scientists were able to figure out what the sun was like before the Earth formed – and apparently, it had a pretty rowdy start. When scientists analyzed the chemical make-up of these crystals, they found atoms that would only be there if the early sun was spitting out lots of high-energy particles – the solar version of going through the ‘terrible twos.’

Our Sun’s beginnings are a mystery. It burst into being 4.6 billion years ago, about 50 million years before the Earth formed...

Artist’s conception of SIMP J01365663+0933473, an object with 12.7 times the mass of Jupiter, but a magnetic field 200 times more powerful than Jupiter’s. This object is 20 light-years from Earth.
Credit: Caltech/Chuck Carter; NRAO/AUI/NSF

Object is at boundary between giant planet and brown dwarf. Astronomers have detected a possible planetary-mass object with a surprisingly powerful magnetic field some 20 light-years from Earth. It can help scientists better understand magnetic processes on stars and planets. Astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have made the first radio-telescope detection of a planetary-mass object beyond our Solar System...