Category Astronomy/Space

3-D printed early universe. Credit: Image courtesy of Imperial College London

Researchers have created a 3D printed cosmic microwave background – a map of the oldest light in the universe — and provided the files for download. The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a glow that the universe has in the microwave range that maps the oldest light in the universe. It was imprinted when the universe first became transparent, instead of an opaque fog of plasma and radiation. The CMB formed when the universe was only 380,000 years old – very early on in its 13.8 billion-year history.

The Planck satellite is making ever-more detailed maps of the CMB, which tells astronomers more about the early universe and the formation of structures within it, such as galaxies...

This color-coded map shows the strength of surface gravity around Orientale basin on the moon, derived from GRAIL data. (The color scale represents units of “gals” — 1 gal is about 1/1000 of Earth’s surface gravitational acceleration.) Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

New results from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission are providing insights into the huge impacts that dominated the early history of Earth’s moon and other solid worlds, like Earth, Mars, and the satellites of the outer solar system.Researchers examine the origins of the moon’s giant Orientale impact basin. The research helps clarify how the formation of Orientale, approximately 3.8 billion years ago, affected the moon’s geology.

Located along the moon’s southwestern limb – the left-hand edge as seen from...

Scale and Compass for Crab Nebula. Credit: NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI)

The eerie glow of a dead star, which exploded long ago as a supernova, reveals itself in this Hubble image of the Crab Nebula. But don’t be fooled. The ghoulish-looking object still has a pulse. Buried at its center is the star’s tell-tale heart, which beats with rhythmic precision. The “heart” is the crushed core of the exploded star. Called a neutron star, it has about the same mass as the sun but is squeezed into an ultra-dense sphere that is only a few miles across and 100 billion times stronger than steel. The tiny powerhouse is the bright star-like object near the center of the image.

This surviving remnant is a tremendous dynamo, spinning 30X /s...

The Cosmic Horseshoe, as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Astronomers use observations of gravitationally lensed galaxy to measure properties of early universe. Although the universe started out with a bang it quickly evolved to a relatively cool, dark place. After a few hundred thousand years the lights came back on and scientists are still trying to figure out why. Astronomers know that reionization made the universe transparent by allowing light from distant galaxies to travel almost freely through the cosmos to reach us. However, astronomers don’t fully understand the escape rate of ionizing photons from early galaxies...