Category Astronomy/Space

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals a glistening and ancient globular cluster named NGC 3201—a gathering of hundreds of thousands of stars bound together by gravity Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Sarajedini et al

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals a glistening and ancient globular cluster named NGC 3201—a gathering of hundreds of thousands of stars bound together by gravity. NGC 3201 was discovered in 1826 by the Scottish astronomer James Dunlop, who described it as a “pretty large, pretty bright” object that becomes “rather irregular” towards its center.

Globular clusters are found around all large galaxies, but their origin and role in galaxy formation remain tantalizingly unclear...

​Magnetic fields play an important role in the places where most massive stars are born. In this illustration, bright spots represent the sources of radio signals from methanol masers, and the curved lines represent the magnetic field.​​​​​​​ ​Wolfgang Steffen/Boy Lankhaar et al. (molecules: Wikimedia Commons/Ben Mills)

A team of scientists, led by Boy Lankhaar at Chalmers University of Technology, has solved an important puzzle in astrochemistry: how to measure magnetic fields in space using methanol, the simplest form of alcohol. Their results, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, give astronomers a new way of investigating how massive stars are born.

Over the last half-century, many molecules have been discovered in space...

Goddard optics experts Babak Saif (left) and Lee Feinberg (right), with help from engineer Eli Griff-McMahon an employee of Genesis, have created an Ultra-Stable Thermal Vacuum system that they will use to make picometer-level measurements. Credit: NASA/W. Hrybyk

Astronomers have shown for the first time that they can dynamically detect subatomic- or picometer-sized distortions – changes that are far smaller than an atom – across a 5-foot segmented telescope mirror and its support structure. NASA optics experts are well on the way to toppling a barrier that has thwarted scientists from achieving a long-held ambition: building an ultra-stable telescope that locates and images dozens of Earth-like planets beyond the solar system and then scrutinizes their atmospheres for signs of life.

To fi...

Blue Waters numerical relativity simulation of two colliding black holes with the open source, numerical relativity software, the Einstein Toolkit. Authors: R. Haas and E. Huerta (NCSA/University of Illinois); Visualization: R. Haas.

Scientists at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, have pioneered the use of GPU-accelerated deep learning for rapid detection and characterization of gravitational waves. This new approach will enable astronomers to study gravitational waves using minimal computational resources, reducing time to discovery and increasing the scientific reach of gravitational wave astrophysics. This innovative research was recently published in Physics Letters B.

Combining deep learning algorithms, numer...