Category Astronomy/Space

Artist’s concept of the GOES-16 aircraft is shown. Credit: NASA

The new Space Environment In-Situ Suite (SEISS) instrument onboard NOAA’s GOES-16 is working and successfully sending data back to Earth. A plot from SEISS data showed how fluxes of charged particles increased over a few minutes around the satellite on January 19, 2017. These particles are often associated with brilliant displays of aurora borealis at northern latitudes and australis at southern latitudes; however, they can pose a radiation hazard to astronauts and other satellites, and threaten radio communications.

Information from SEISS will help NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center provide early warning of these high flux events, so astronauts, satellite operators and others can take action to protect lives and equipment...

The Andromeda constellation should not be confused with Andromeda Galaxy. It is home to the pictured galaxy known as NGC 7640.

Andromeda constellation is 1 of the 88 modern constellations and should not be confused with our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy. The Andromeda constellation is home to the pictured galaxy known as NGC 7640. Many different classifications are used to identify galaxies by shape and structure – NGC 7640 is a barred spiral type. These are recognizable by their spiral arms, which fan out not from a circular core, but from an elongated bar cutting through the galaxy’s center. Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is also a barred spiral galaxy...

Depiction of the solar nebula dispersal in action about 3 million years after the solar system formed. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL

About 4.6 billion years ago, an enormous cloud of H gas and dust collapsed under its own weight, eventually flattening into a disk called the solar nebula. Most of this interstellar material contracted at the disk’s center to form the sun, and part of the solar nebula’s remaining gas and dust condensed to form the planets and the rest of our solar system. Now scientists from MIT and their colleagues have estimated the lifetime of the solar nebula – a key stage during which much of the solar system evolution took shape. This new estimate suggests that the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn must have formed within the first 4 million years of the solar system’s formation...

Andromeda Galaxy (stock image). Credit: © passmil198216 / Fotolia

Quest to settle riddle over Einstein’s theory may soon be over. Tests using advanced technology could resolve a longstanding puzzle over what is driving the accelerated expansion of the Universe. Researchers have long sought to determine how the Universe’s accelerated expansion is being driven. Calculations in a new study could help to explain whether dark energy- as required by Einstein’s theory of general relativity – or a revised theory of gravity are responsible.

Einstein’s theory, which describes gravity as distortions of space and time, included a Cosmological Constant...