Category Astronomy/Space

Image from the PAN-STARRS Telescope at Hawaii from early 2011 with the foreground star Ross 322 (blue square) and the background star (at the centre of the green circle) which will be traversed by Ross 322 in the next few weeks. By summer 2015, Ross 322 had moved to the position of the blue triangle (measured by Gaia). Since then, it has been moving along the blue-red line and is currently close to the position of the background star.

Astronomers have published the predictions of the passages of foreground stars in front of background stars. A team of astronomers, using ultra-precise measurements from the Gaia satellite, have accurately forecast two passages in the next months...

The SwRI-led team processed solar coronal images to reveal universal gusts, jets and streams (green) emanating from the Sun, offering a possible explanation for the gusty solar wind found around Earth. The upcoming Parker Solar Probe will fly through this riotous torrent as the first spacecraft ever designed to ‘touch’ the Sun.
Credit: Image Courtesy of NASA/SwRI/STEREO

A SWRI-led team discovered never-before-detected, fine-grained structures in the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona. The team imaged this critical region in detail using sophisticated software techniques and longer exposures from the COR-2 camera on board NASA’s Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory-A (STEREO-A).

The Sun’s outer corona is the source of the solar wind, the stream of charged particles that flow outward fr...

Illustration of Parker Solar Probe circling the Sun.
Credit: NASA/JHUAPL

This summer, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will launch to travel closer to the Sun, deeper into the solar atmosphere, than any mission before it. If Earth was at one end of a yard-stick and the Sun on the other, Parker Solar Probe will make it to within four inches of the solar surface. Inside that part of the solar atmosphere, a region known as the corona, Parker Solar Probe will provide unprecedented observations of what drives the wide range of particles, energy and heat that course through the region – flinging particles outward into the solar system and far past Neptune.

Inside the corona, it’s also, of course, unimaginably hot...

This artist’s illustration depicts the destruction of a young planet, which scientists may have witnessed for the first time. Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

An analysis of X-ray data suggests the first observations of a star swallowing a planet, and may also explain the star’s mysterious dimming. For nearly a century, astronomers have puzzled over the curious variability of young stars residing in the Taurus-Auriga constellation some 450 light years from Earth. One star in particular has drawn astronomers’ attention. Every few decades, the star’s light has faded briefly before brightening again.

In recent years, astronomers have observed the star dimming more frequently, and for longer periods, raising the question: What is repeatedly obscuring the star? The answer, astronomers believe, could sh...