Category Astronomy/Space

Hubble took this photo of Mars when the planet was 50 million miles from Earth, during its last opposition in 2016. The photo reveals details as small as 20 to 30 miles across. Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), J. Bell (ASU), and M. Wolff (Space Science Institute)

Webb will investigate how Mars went from wet to dry. Mars rovers and orbiters have found signs that Mars once hosted liquid water on its surface. Much of that water escaped over time. How much water was lost, and how does the water that’s left move from ice to atmosphere to soil? During its first year of operations, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will seek answers. Webb also will study mysterious methane plumes that hint at possible geological or even biological activity.

Mars will be targeted as pa...

Top: Area of sky before the supernova was detected. Bottom: The supernova is detected.
Credit: M Smith and DES collaboration

An international team led by the University of Southampton has confirmed the discovery of the most distant supernova ever detected – a huge cosmic explosion that took place 10.5 billion years ago, or 3/4 the age of the Universe itself. The exploding star, DES16C2nm, was detected by the Dark Energy Survey (DES), an international collaboration to map several hundred million galaxies in order to find out more about dark energy – the mysterious force believed to be causing the accelerated expansion of the Universe.

As detailed in a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal, light from the event has taken 10...

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...