Category Astronomy/Space

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows Supernova 1987A within the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring galaxy to our Milky Way. Credit: NASA, ESA, R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation), and M. Mutchler and R. Avila (STScI)

3 decades ago, astronomers spotted one of the brightest exploding stars in more than 400 years. The titanic supernova, called Supernova 1987A (SN 1987A), blazed with the power of 100 million suns for several months following its discovery on Feb. 23, 1987. Since that first sighting, SN 1987A has continued to fascinate astronomers with its spectacular light show...

This high-resolution image was captured by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on its Pluto flyby in 2015, combining blue, red, and infrared images taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC). The bright region in the west is part of Pluto’s ‘heart’, and is rich in nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and methane ices. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

In 2015, in partnership with NASA’s New Horizons mission and the SETI Institute, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) endorsed the Our Pluto naming campaign, which allowed the public to participate in the exploration of Pluto by proposing names for surface features on Pluto and its satellites that were still awaiting discovery...

MAMMOTH-1 is an extended blob of gas in the intergalactic medium called an enormous Lyman-alpha nebula (ELAN). The color map and contours denote the surface brightness of the nebula, and the red arrows show its estimated spatial extent. (Image credit: Figure 2 of Cai et al., Astrophysical Journal)

Glowing nebula found at the heart of a huge ‘rotocluster’ of early galaxies appears to be part of the cosmic web of filaments connecting galaxies, but what’s lighting it up? Astronomers have found an enormous, glowing blob of gas in the distant universe, with no obvious source of power for the light it is emitting. Called an “enormous Lyman-alpha nebula” (ELAN), it is the brightest and among the largest of these rare objects, only a handful of which have been observed.

ELANs are huge blobs of gas...

This is a tiny cosmic dust particle. The black circles are air filled pockets called vesicles. Credit: Image courtesy of Imperial College London

Bubbles acting like parachutes are deployed by some cosmic dust particles on their entry into Earth’s atmosphere, preventing them from burning up. This is the conclusion of a new study carried out by a researcher from Imperial College London. Cosmic dust particles originate from events such the arrival of comets in the inner solar system and collisions between asteroids, which pulverises them into dust. Some make it through the rapid descent through Earth’s atmosphere, providing microscopic records of some of the earliest events in our solar system.

The researcher found that cosmic dust particles containing water-rich minerals survive atmospheric ...