Category Astronomy/Space

Northern lights as seen over Norway. Credit: Jan R. Olsen

Jonathan Ng, a Princeton University graduate student at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), has for the first time applied a fluid simulation to the space plasma process behind solar flares, northern lights and space storms. The model could lead to improved forecasts of space weather that can shut down cell phone service and damage power grid, and better understanding of the hot, charged plasma gas that fuels fusion reactions.

The new simulation captures the physics of magnetic reconnection, the breaking apart and snapping together of the magnetic field lines in plasma that occurs throughout the universe...

Pluto’s first official surface-feature names are marked on this map, compiled from images and data gathered by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft during its flight through the Pluto system in 2015. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI/Ross Beyer

The IAU has assigned names to 14 geological features on the surface of Pluto. The names pay homage to the underworld mythology, pioneering space missions, historic pioneers who crossed new horizons in exploration, and scientists and engineers associated with Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. This is the first set of official names of surface features on Pluto to be approved by the IAU, the internationally recognised authority for naming celestial bodies and their surface features.

NASA’s New Horizons team proposed the names to the IAU following the first reconnaissance o...

UV light from Superluminous Supernova key to revealing Explosion mechanism

An international team has discovered a way to use UV light from superluminous supernovae to uncover its explosion mechanism, and used it to identify Gaia16apd as a shock-interacting supernova, reports a new study. An international team has discovered a way to use observations at UV wavelengths to uncover characteristics about superluminous supernovae previously impossible to determine.

The team, led by Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) Project Researcher Alexey Tolstov, study stellar explosions called Superluminous Supernovae (SLSNe), an extra bright type of supernova discovered in the last decade that is 10 to 100 times brighter than ordinary supernovae...

Composite image of the X-ray pulsar SXP 1062 surrounded by the supernova remnant. The false-color image combines X-ray (blue) and optical data (oxygen: green, hydrogen: red). Credit: ESA / XMM-Newton / L. Oskinova, University of Potsdam, Germany / M. Guerrero, Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia, Spain (X-ray); Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory / R. Gruendl & Y. H. Chu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA (optical)

The discovery of the largest timing irregularity yet observed in a pulsar is the first confirmation that pulsars in binary systems exhibit the strange phenomenon known as a ‘glitch’. Pulsars are one possible result of the final stages of evolution of massive stars...