Category Astronomy/Space

WISPIT2b, a gas giant forming around a young Sun-like star, has been directly imaged for the first time inside a spectacular multiringed disk. Still glowing and actively accreting gas, the planet offers a unique opportunity to study planetary birth and evolution.

An international team of astronomers, co-led by researchers at University of Galway, has made the unexpected discovery of a new planet.

Detected at an early stage of formation around a young analog of our own Sun, the planet is estimated to be about 5 million years-old and most likely a gas giant of similar size to Jupiter.

The study, which was led by Leiden University, University of Galway and University of Arizona, has been published in the international journal Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The ground-breaking...

In the 17th century, German astronomer Johannes Kepler figured out the laws of motion that made it possible to accurately predict where our solar system’s planets would appear in the sky as they orbit the sun. But it wasn’t until decades later, when Isaac Newton formulated the universal laws of gravitation, that the underlying principles were understood.

Although they were inspired by Kepler’s laws, they went much further, and made it possible to apply the same formulas to everything from the trajectory of a cannon ball to the way the moon’s pull controls the tides on Earth—or how to launch a satellite from Earth to the surface of the moon or planets.

Today’s sophisticated artificial intelligence systems have gotten very good at making the kind...

The idea of building settlements on Mars is a popular goal of billionaires, space agencies and interplanetary enthusiasts.

But construction demands materials, and we can’t ship it all from Earth: it cost US$243 million just to send NASA’s one ton Perseverance Rover to the Red Planet.

Unless we’re building a settlement for ants, we’ll need much, much more stuff. So how do we get it there?

CSIRO Postdoctoral Fellow and Swinburne alum Dr. Deddy Nababan has been pondering this question for years. His answer lies in the Martian dirt, known as regolith.

“Sending metals to Mars from Earth might be feasible, but it’s not economical...

A giant bubble of gas and dust surrounds the red supergiant DFK 52, likely created in a powerful outburst 4,000 years ago. Astronomers are baffled at how the star survived without going supernova, and suspect a hidden companion may have played a role. This discovery could reveal clues about the final stages of massive stars.

Astronomers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have discovered a vast and expanding bubble of gas and dust surrounding a red supergiant star – the largest structure of its kind ever seen in the Milky Way...