Category Astronomy/Space

Using data from the LAMP instrument aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a Southwest Research Institute-led team of scientists discovered two geologically young craters — one (right) 16 million, the other (left) between 75 and 420 million, years old — in the Moon’s darkest regions. One lies within Slater Crater, named for the late Dr. David C. Slater, a former SwRI space scientist who designed and built the LAMP instrument. Credit: Albedo map credit: NASA GSFC/SwRI; Topographic map credit: NASA GSFC/ASU Jmoon

New technique allows scientists to ‘age’ craters in the darkest regions of the Moon. A team of scientists discovered 2 geologically young craters – one 16 million, the other between 75 and 420 million years old...

Location of the southern Antarctic Circumpolar Current front (white contour), with -1 degree Celsius sea surface temperature lines (black contours) on Sept. 22 each year from 2002-2009, plotted against a chart of the depth of the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. The white cross is Bouvet Island. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Why has the sea ice cover surrounding Antarctica been increasing slightly, in sharp contrast to the drastic loss of sea ice occurring in the Arctic Ocean? A new NASA-led study finds the geology of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean are responsible.

A NASA/NOAA/university team led by Son Nghiem of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, used satellite radar, sea surface temperature, land form and bathymetry (ocean depth) data to study the physical processes a...

Hubble sees a swarm of ancient star clusters around lenticular galaxy NGC 5308, located just under 100 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows star clusters encircling a galaxy, like bees buzzing around a hive: lenticular galaxy NGC 5308, just under 100 million light-years away in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear). Members of a galaxy type that lies between an elliptical and a spiral galaxy, lenticular galaxies such as NGC 5308 are disk galaxies that have used up, or lost, the majority of their gas and dust. As a result, they experience very little ongoing star formation and consist mainly of old and aging stars.

On Oct...

NASA’s artist impression of SN 2006gy, one of the most luminous hypernovae seen. Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

An international team has spotted a surprising UV rebrightening in a distant superluminous supernova, ASASSN-15lh. The event has baffled the scientists as has no hydrogen emission characteristic of superluminous supernovae and tidal disruption events. Also called hypernovae, these are dozens of times more luminous than normal supernovae. ASASSN-15lh, detected by the All Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN) in 2015, is a real ‘assassin’ among these explosion events. It is about 200X more powerful than the average supernova and approximately 570 billion times brighter than our sun. It is so far the most luminous supernova ever detected.

Now, Brown et al have used data from NASA’...