Category Astronomy/Space

Light reflecting off of the primary and secondary mirrors of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope as mirrors are being aligned Credits: NASA/M. McClare

About 1 million miles away from the nearest eye surgeon, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will be able to perfect its own vision while in orbit. Though the Webb telescope will focus on stars and galaxies approximately 13.5 billion light-years away, its sight goes through a similar process as you would if you underwent laser vision correction surgery to be able to focus on an object 10 feet across the room...

An artist’s conception of a view from within the Exocomet system KIC 3542116. Credit: Danielle Futselaar

Tails of comets seen streaking past a distant star. Scientists from MIT and other institutions, working closely with amateur astronomers, have spotted the dusty tails of 6 exocomets – comets outside our solar system – orbiting a faint star 800 light years from Earth. These cosmic balls of ice and dust, about the size of Halley’s Comet and traveled about 100,000 miles per hour before they ultimately vaporized, are some of the smallest objects yet found outside our own solar system.

The discovery marks the first time that an object as small as a comet has been detected using transit photometry, a technique by which astronomers observe a star’s light for telltale dips in intensity...

Seething hot planet Kepler-13Ab that circles very close to its host star, Kepler-13A. In the background is the star’s binary companion, Kepler-13B, and the third member of the multiple-star system is the orange dwarf star Kepler-13C. Astronomers have detected a precipitation process, called a “cold trap,” on an exoplanet. Without titanium oxide to absorb incoming starlight on the daytime side, the atmospheric temperature grows colder with increasing altitude. Normally, titanium oxide in the atmospheres of hot Jupiters absorbs light and reradiates it as heat, making the atmosphere grow warmer at higher altitudes. The Kepler-13 system is 1,730 light-years from Earth. Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)

Hubble has found a blistering-hot giant planet outside our solar system where the atmo...

Abell S1063, a galaxy cluster, was observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope as part of the Frontier Fields programme. The huge mass of the cluster acts as a cosmic magnifying glass and enlarges even more distant galaxies, so they become bright enough for Hubble to see. Credit: NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz (STScI)

Observations may hint at nature of dark matter. Using Hubble, astronomers have discovered that the brightest galaxies within galaxy clusters “wobble” relative to the cluster’s centre of mass. This unexpected result is inconsistent with predictions made by the current standard model of dark matter. With further analysis it may provide insights into the nature of dark matter, perhaps even indicating that new physics is at work.

Invisible halos of elusive dark matter enclose galaxie...