Category Astronomy/Space

VISTA views Messier 78 . Credit: European Southern Observatory – ESO

In this new image of the nebula Messier 78, young stars cast a bluish pall over their surroundings, while red fledgling stars peer out from their cocoons of cosmic dust. To our eyes, most of these stars would be hidden behind the dust, but ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) sees near-infrared light, which passes right through dust. The telescope is like a giant dustbuster that lets astronomers probe deep into the heart of the stellar environment.

Messier 78, or M78, is a well-studied example of a reflection nebula. It is ~1600 light-years away in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter), just to the upper left of the 3 stars that make up the belt of this familiar landmark in the sky...

An artist’s impression of a millisecond pulsar and its companion. The pulsar (seen in blue with two radiation beams) is accreting material from its bloated red companion star and increasing its rotation rate. Astronomers have measured the orbital parameters of four millisecond pulsars in the globular cluster 47 Tuc and modeled their possible formation and evolution paths. Credit: European Space Agency & Francesco Ferraro (Bologna Astronomical Observatory)

When a star with a mass of roughly 10 solar masses finishes its life, it explodes as a supernova, leaving behind a neutron star as remnant “ash.” Neutron stars have masses of one-to-several suns but they are tiny in diameter, only tens of kilometers...

On the 9th the moon has traveled through one quarter of its 29-day orbit around Earth, and we see the first quarter phase.

The new moon phase started October 1. Of course, the new moon isn’t visible, because it’s between Earth and the sun, and the unlit side is facing Earth. Night by night the slender crescent gets bigger and higher in the sky and easier to see just after sunset. On the 3rd and 4th, the moon will pass just above Venus!

On the 22nd of October, the last quarter moon rises at midnight. Later, the pretty and bright Beehive Cluster will be visible near the moon until dawn.

The 8th is Fall Astronomy Day, celebrated internationally by astronomy clubs since 1973...

Thermal dust emission from the protoplanetary disk surrounding the young star Elias 2-27 clearly shows a spiral structure. Credit: B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF); ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); L. Pérez (MPIfR)

Astronomers have found distinct spiral arms in the disk of gas and dust surrounding the young star Elias 2-27. This is the first time they have been identified within the disk, where planet formation takes place. Structures such as these could either indicate the presence of a newly formed planet, or else create the necessary conditions for a planet to form. As such, the results are a crucial step towards a better understanding how planetary systems like our Solar system came into being...