Category Astronomy/Space

Artist rendition of the asteroid Psyche. Credit: Image by Peter Rubin/ASU

Psyche to offer unique look into violent collisions that created Earth, terrestrial planets. Arizona State University’s Psyche Mission, a journey to a metal asteroid, has been selected for flight, marking the first time the school will lead a deep-space NASA mission and the first time scientists will be able to see what is believed to be a planetary core. It will launch in 2023, arriving at the asteroid in 2030, where it will spend 20 months in orbit, mapping it and studying its properties.

It will be part of NASA’s Discovery Program, a series of lower-cost, highly focused robotic space missions that are exploring the solar system. The Psyche project is capped at $450 million...

This artist’s impression shows the spiral galaxy NGC 4921 based on observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: ICRAR, NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team. STScI/AURA

It’s the big astrophysical whodunnit. Across the Universe, galaxies are being killed and the question scientists want answered is, what’s killing them? New research published today by a global team of researchers, based at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), seeks to answer that question. The study reveals that ram-pressure stripping is more prevalent than previously thought, driving gas from galaxies and sending them to an early death by depriving them of the material to make new stars.

The study of 11,000 galaxies shows their gas – the lifeblood for star formation – is being violently ...

An artist’s representation of what the three unusual tails of the pulsar Geminga may look like close up. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is giving astronomers a better look at pulsars and their associated pulsar wind nebulae, enabling new constraints on the geometry of pulsars and why they look the way they do from Earth. Credit: Nahks Tr’Ehnl

Like cosmic lighthouses sweeping the universe with bursts of energy, pulsars have fascinated and baffled astronomers since they were first discovered 50 years ago. In 2 studies, international teams suggest that recent images from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory of 2 pulsars – Geminga and B0355+54 – may help shine a light on the distinctive emission signatures of pulsars, as well as their often perplexing geometry.

Pulsars are a type of neutron star...

This image of the entire Sun was taken in the red visible light emitted by iron atoms in the Sun’s atmosphere. Light at this wavelength originates from the visible solar surface, the photosphere. A cooler, darker sunspot is clearly visible in the disc, and as a visual comparison is shown alongside the image from ALMA at a wavelength of 1.25 millimetres. The full-disc solar image was taken with the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), NASA.

New images taken with the ALMA in Chile have revealed otherwise invisible details of our Sun, including a new view of the dark, contorted centre of a sunspot that is nearly twice the diameter of the Earth...