Category Astronomy/Space

This artistic impression shows the universe around the star formation area with, as an overlay, the scientists’ observations.(c) Veronica Allen/Alexandra Elconin (http://alsewhere.weebly.com)

An international team of astronomers, led by Dutch scientists, has discovered a region in our Milky Way that contains many nitrogen compounds in the southeast of a butterfly-shaped star formation disk and very little in the north-west. The astronomers suspect that multiple stars-to-be share the same star formation disk, but the precise process is still a puzzle.

They studied the star forming region G35.20-0.74N, more than 7000 light years from Earth in the southern sky. The astronomers used the (sub)millimeter telescope ALMA which can map molecular gas clouds in which stars form...

This artist concept shows the MAVEN spacecraft and the limb of Mars. Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

On June 17, NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission) will celebrate 1,000 Earth days in orbit around the Red Planet. Since its launch in November 2013 and its orbit insertion in September 2014, MAVEN has been exploring the upper atmosphere of Mars. MAVEN is bringing insight to how the sun stripped Mars of most of its atmosphere, turning a planet once possibly habitable to microbial life into a barren desert world. “MAVEN has made tremendous discoveries about the Mars upper atmosphere and how it interacts with the sun and the solar wind,” said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator from the University of Colorado, Boulder...

Physical picture of the applied magnetic field lines (blue lines) and the magnetic field lines (red lines) modified by the plasma flow, i.e., sum of the applied and plasma-induced magnetic fields. The plasma decreases the axial field component at the upstream side of the magnetic nozzle and increases it at the downstream side of the nozzle as described by the insets, where the transition between these two states are identified as shown by the upper left inset. Credit: Kazunori Takahashi

Researchers from Tohoku University have been trying to find out how the plasma flow is influenced by its environment via laboratory experiments. And in doing so, have made headway on research towards creating an electrodeless plasma thruster used to propel spacecraft.

The universe is made up of plasma – a g...

A ribbon of ammonia — a tracer of star-forming gas — in the Orion Nebula as seen with the GBT (orange). Background image in blue is a WISE telescope infrared image showing the dust in the region. Credit: GBO/AUI/NSF; J.Pineda, MPE; NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/WISE/A.Meisner

A striking new image of the Orion Molecular Cloud (OMC) has been unveiled- a bustling stellar nursery teeming with bright, young stars and dazzling regions of hot, glowing gas. The researchers used the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in

West Virginia to study a 50 light-year long filament of star-forming gas that is wending its way through the northern portion of the OMC known as Orion A.

The GBT rendered this image by detecting the faint radio signals naturally emitted by molecules of ammonia t...