Category Astronomy/Space

This spectacular view of the Bubble Nebula was created from four separate images from the Hubble Space Telescope to mark the observatory’s 26th birthday in April 2016. The Bubble Nebula is 10 light-years wide and sculpted by the bright star seen to the left of center. Credit: NASA, ESA, Hubble Heritage Team – See more at: http://www.space.com/32648-hubble-telescope-spectacular-birthday-bubble-image.html#sthash.rDIUMEqz.dpuf

This new Hubble image, released to celebrate Hubble’s 26th year in orbit, captures in stunning clarity what looks like a gigantic cosmic soap bubble. Bubble Nebula, is in fact a cloud of gas and dust illuminated by the brilliant star within it...

Space shuttle Atlantis is photographed from the International Space Station as it flies over the Bahamas prior to docking with the station (2011). Credit: NASA

In a discovery with implications for long-term spaceflight and future missions to Mars, a researcher at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus has found that mice flown aboard the space shuttle Atlantis returned to Earth with early signs of liver disease. “Prior to this study we really didn’t have much information on the impact of spaceflight on the liver,” said A/Prof Karen Jonscher. “We knew that astronauts often returned with diabetes-like symptoms but they usually resolved quickly.”

The mice studied spent 13.5 days aboard the space shuttle...

During a December 2013 solar flare, three NASA missions observed a current sheet form — a strong clue for explaining what initiates the flares. This animation shows four views of the flare from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, NASA’s Solar and Terrestrial Relations Observatory, and JAXA/NASA’s Hinode, allowing scientists to make unprecedented measurements of its characteristics. The current sheet is a long, thin structure, especially visible in the views on the left. Those two animations depict light emitted by material with higher temperatures, so they better show the extremely hot current sheet. Credit: NASA/JAXA/SDO/STEREO/Hinode (courtesy Zhu, et al.)

Solar flares are intense bursts of light from the sun...

Visualization of merging black holes and gravitational waves. Credit: NASA/J. Bernard Kelly (Goddard), Chris Henze (Ames) and Tim Sandstrom (CSC Government Solutions LLC)

On Sept. 14, waves of energy traveling for more than a billion years gently rattled space-time in the vicinity of Earth. The disturbance, produced by a pair of merging black holes, was captured by Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) facilities in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana. This event marked the 1st-ever detection of gravitational waves and opens a new scientific window on how the universe works.

Less than half a second later, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) on NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope picked up a brief, weak burst of high-energy light consistent with the same par...