Category Astronomy/Space

Light curve of OGLE-2013-BLG-0132. The inset shows the enlargement of the caustic crossing parts of the light curve. The lower panel shows the residuals from the best-fit model. Credit: Mróz et al., 2017.

An international team has detected 2 new giant alien worlds circling distant stars. The newly found planets are estimated to be as massive as Saturn and are orbiting M dwarfs beyond the snow line. The planets were discovered by researchers working as part of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) group and the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA) collaboration. OGLE uses the 1.3-m Warsaw Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, while MOA utilizes the 1.8-m MOA-II telescope at the Mount John University Observatory, located in New Zealand...

This is an artist’s concept of the metric expansion of space, where space (including hypothetical non-observable portions of the universe) is represented at each time by the circular sections. Note on the left the dramatic expansion (not to scale) occurring in the inflationary epoch, and at the center the expansion acceleration. The scheme is decorated with WMAP images on the left and with the representation of stars at the appropriate level of development. Credit: NASA

Scientists have created computer simulations of events soon after the Big Bang to better understand how stars today are being formed. Researchers have formed the clearest picture yet of massive explosions that controlled the creation of galaxies, including our own, and continue to influence star formation today...

The Rapid Acquisition Imaging Spectrograph Experiment or RAISE was successfully launched at 2:24:58 p.m. EDT, May 5. The payload was launched on a NASA Black Brant IX sounding rocket at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico and flew to an altitude of 184 miles The experimenter, Don Hassler with the Southwest Research Institute, reported that good data from the instruments observing the sun was received during the flight. The payload is being recovered.

The NASA-funded RAISE mission scrutinized split-second changes occurring near the sun’s active regions — areas of intense, complex magnetic activity that can give rise to solar flares, which eject energy and solar material out into space...

This view from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover shows two scales of ripples, plus other textures, in an area where the mission examined a linear-shaped dune in the Bagnold dune field on lower Mount Sharp. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

As it drives uphill from a band of rippled sand dunes, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover is toting a fistful of dark sand for onboard analysis that will complete the rover’s investigation of those dunes. From early February to early April, the rover examined 4 sites near a linear dune for comparison with what it found in late 2015 and early 2016 during its investigation of crescent-shaped dunes. This two-phase campaign is the 1st close-up study of active dunes anywhere other than Earth...