Category Astronomy/Space

This illustration shows several comets speeding across a vast protoplanetary disk of gas and dust and heading straight for the youthful, central star. These “kamikaze” comets will eventually plunge into the star and vaporize. The comets are too small to photograph, but their gaseous spectral “fingerprints” on the star’s light were detected by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The gravitational influence of a suspected Jupiter-sized planet in the foreground may have catapulted the comets into the star. This star, called HD 172555, represents the third extrasolar system where astronomers have detected doomed, wayward comets. The star resides 95 light-years from Earth. Credit: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild and G. Bacon (STScI)

Interstellar forecast for a nearby star: Raining comets! Hubble has discove...

Artist rendition of interior compositions of planets around the stars Kepler 102 and Kepler 407. The picture shows what minerals are likely to occur several different depths. Kepler 102 is Earth-like, dominated by olivine minerals, whereas Kepler 407 is dominated by garnet, so less likely to have plate tectonics. Credit: Robin Dienel, Carnegie DTM

What makes a rocky planet Earth-like? Astronomers and geoscientists have joined forces using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) to study the mix of elements in exoplanet host stars, and to consider what this reveals about their planets...

Galaxy cluster. Credit: NASA/CXC/SAO, TIFR/NCRA/GMRT, NAOJ/Subaru: R. van Weeren et al

An international team of astronomers, including Lancaster’s David Sobral, has discovered a cosmic one-two punch never seen before. 2 of the most powerful phenomena in the Universe – a supermassive black hole and the collision of giant galaxy clusters – have combined to create a stupendous cosmic particle accelerator. By combining data from some of the best X-ray, optical and radio telescopes in the world, researchers have found out what happens when matter ejected by a giant black hole is swept up in the merger of two enormous galaxy clusters.

This cosmic double whammy is found in a pair of colliding galaxy clusters called Abell 3411 and Abell 3412 located about 2 billion light years from Earth...

Photo Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

Using a model similar to what meteorologists use to forecast weather on Earth and a computer simulation of the physics of evaporating ices, a new study has found evidence that snow and ice features previously only seen on Earth, have been spotted on Pluto. “Penitentes” which are formed by erosion, are bowl-shaped depressions with spires around the edge, and are several metres high.

The groundbreaking research, done in collaboration with researchers at NASA and Johns Hopkins University, indicates that these icy features may exist on other planets where environmental conditions are similar...