Category Astronomy/Space

Final sequence of images of Asteroid Lutetia, acquired on 10 July 2010 by ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft just before making closest approach of 3162 km. Lutetia is an elongated body, with its longest side around 130 km. ~ESA 2010 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA

The international effort to find, confirm and catalogue the multitude of asteroids that pose a threat to our planet has reached a milestone: 15 000 discovered – with many more to go.The number of catalogued asteroids approaching Earth has grown rapidly since the count reached 10 000 only 3 years ago. Near-Earth objects, or NEOs, are asteroids or comets with sizes ranging from metres to tens of kilometres whose orbits come close to ours, ie they could hit our planet.

The discovered NEOs are part of a much lar...

This artist’s concept illustrates how the most extreme “pumpkin star” found by Kepler and Swift compares with the sun. Both stars are shown to scale. KSw 71 is larger, cooler and redder than the sun and rotates four times faster. Rapid spin causes the star to flatten into a pumpkin shape, which results in brighter poles and a darker equator. Rapid rotation also drives increased levels of stellar activity such as starspots, flares and prominences, producing X-ray emission over 4,000 times more intense than the peak emission from the sun. KSw 71 is thought to have recently formed following the merger of two sun-like stars in a close binary system. Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Francis Reddy

Astronomers using observations from NASA’s Kepler and Swift missions have discovered a b...

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...