Category Astronomy/Space

WISE 3-color (W1+W2+W3) image of NGC 6744. Left panel shows the images before star subtraction, and the right panel after. Credit: Yew et al., 2018.

The new research identifies radio and X-ray sources in NGC 6744 and estimates its star formation rate. Discovered in 1823, NGC 6744 is an intermediate spiral galaxy 30 million light years away in the constellation Pavo. It is thought to be one of the most Milky Way-like spiral galaxies in our immediate vicinity, and is perceived by astronomers as a useful analogue to our own galaxy when it comes to studying objects such as supernova remnants and H II regions—clouds of glowing gas and plasma in which star formation takes place.

When in 2005 a type Ic supernova was found in NGC 6744 at optical wavebands, astronomers started to observe this gal...

Textured rows on the ground in this portion of “Perseverance Valley” are under investigation by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, which used its Navigation Camera to take the component images of this downhill-looking scene. The rover reaches its 5,000th Martian day, or sol, on Feb. 16, 2018. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity keeps providing surprises about the Red Planet, most recently with observations of possible “rock stripes”.The ground texture seen in recent images from the rover resembles a smudged version of very distinctive stone stripes on some mountain slopes on Earth that result from repeated cycles of freezing and thawing of wet soil. But it might also be due to wind, downhill transport, other processes or a combination.

Opportuni...

This series of Hubble Space Telescope images taken over 2 years tracks the demise of a giant dark vortex on the planet Neptune. The oval-shaped spot has shrunk from 3,100 miles across its long axis to 2,300 miles across, over the Hubble observation period. Credit: NASA, ESA, and M.H. Wong and A.I. Hsu (UC Berkeley)

Three billion miles away on the farthest known major planet in our solar system, an ominous, dark storm – once big enough to stretch across the Atlantic Ocean from Boston to Portugal – is shrinking out of existence as seen in pictures of Neptune taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. Immense dark storms on Neptune were first discovered in the late 1980s by NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft...

The ERG spacecraft observed chorus waves and scattered electrons in the magnetosphere, the origin of pulsation auroras. The scattered electrons precipitated into the atmosphere resulting in auroral illumination. Intermittent occurrence of chorus waves and associated electron scattering lead to auroral pulsation. Credit: 2018 ERG science team.

For the first time, a satellite has directly observed the shower of electrons bouncing across Earth’s magnetosphere, allowing scientists to figure out what causes a rare form of Northern Lights known as pulsating auroras. Typically, the Aurora Borealis is caused by charged particles released from the upper atmosphere of the Sun...