Category Astronomy/Space

This artist’s concept shows what the young, dead, disk galaxy MACS2129-1, right, would look like when compared with the Milky Way galaxy, left. Although three times as massive as the Milky Way, it is only half the size. MACS2129-1 is also spinning more than twice as fast as the Milky Way. Note that regions of Milky Way are blue from bursts of star formation, while the young, dead galaxy is yellow, signifying an older star population and no new star birth. Credit: NASA, ESA, and Z. Levy (STScI)

By combining the power of a “natural lens” in space with the capability of Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers made a surprising discovery – the first example of a compact yet massive, fast-spinning, disk-shaped galaxy that stopped making stars only a few billion years after the big bang...

400 kilometres above the ground, in the ISS space station, you can’t just stick your head out the window and breathe fresh air, if harmful gases should leak into the indoor environment of NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and her colleagues. Now, Norwegian and German technologists are developing new and fast working technology for monitoring the indoor air in the space station. Credit: NASA

How do we prevent astronauts in space from inhaling hazardous gases? A German-Norwegian hi-tech optical gas sensor provides a solution. “Astronauts must receive early warnings if harmful or unpleasant gases get mixed in with their breathing air,” says Senior Scientist Atle Honne at SINTEF. “Because in space you can’t just open a window to ventilate the room,” he says.

As a child he read everything he could l...

The different layers of Earth’s airglow can be seen from the International Space Station as it orbits Earth. The very thin green layer above the bottom of the window occurs 95 kilometers (59 miles) above Earth’s surface; the red region above is a different type of airglow. The rectangle represents the portion of the airglow measured in a single WINDII image. Credit: American Geophysical Union

Dating back to the first century, scientists, philosophers and reporters have noted the occasional occurrence of “bright nights,” when an unexplained glow in the night sky lets observers see distant mountains, read a newspaper or check their watch. A new study uses satellite data to present a possible explanation for these puzzling historical phenomena.
The authors suggest that when waves in the u...

Protostar FIR 3 (HOPS 370) with outflow that may have triggered the formation of younger protostar FIR 4 (HOPS 108, location marked with red dot), in the Orion star-forming region. (au = astronomical unit, the distance from the Earth to the Sun, about 93 million miles.)
Credit: Osorio et al., NRAO/AUI/NSF

Youngerstar is in path of outflow from older. Astronomers using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have found new evidence suggesting that a jet of fast-moving material ejected from one young star may have triggered the formation of another, younger protostar. “The orientation of the jet, the speed of its material, and the distance all are right for this scenario,” said Mayra Osorio, of the Astrophysical Institute of Andalucia (IAA-CSIC) in Spain.

The scientists studied a giant clo...