Category Astronomy/Space

Saturn’s B ring is the most opaque of the main rings, appearing almost black in this Cassini image taken from the unlit side of the ringplane. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

It seems intuitive opaque material should contain more stuff than a more translucent substance. But this does not always apply, according to a recent study of the rings using data from NASA’s Cassini mission. Saturn’s B ring is the brightest and most opaque of Saturn’s rings, and are consistent with previous studies that found similar results for Saturn’s other main rings.

Some parts of Saturn’s B ring are up to 10 times more opaque than the neighboring A ring, but the B ring may weigh in at only two to three times the A ring’s mass. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

While opacity of B ...

Chandra’s X-ray data (blue) have been combined with radio data from the Australia Telescope Compact Array (red) in this new composite image. The labeled image shows the location of the supermassive black hole, the jet and the counterjet. Also labeled is a “radio lobe” where the jet is pushing into surrounding gas and a “hotspot” caused by shock waves – akin to sonic booms from a supersonic aircraft – near the tip of the jet.

Star Wars featured the “Death Star,” which can shoot powerful beams of radiation across space. The Universe, however, produces phenomena that often surpass what science fiction can conjure. The Pictor A galaxy lies 500 million light years from Earth with a supermassive black hole at its center...

The red line show the approximate path traced by the field of view of the telescope during observations. The coordinate of Saturn at the time of it’s passing is shown on top left corner. Credit: Pranshu Mandal et al., 2016.

A team of undergraduates from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) at the College of Engineering in Trivandrum, India, has designed and constructed a portable college-level radio telescope for amateur radio astronomers. The students have developed a radio telescope and also data analysis tools that are affordable for schools and colleges, combining low cost and ubiquitous accessibility of resources needed to build these instruments.

“The telescope is dedicated to amateur radio astronomers ranging from high school students to college graduates...

One of the CRESST detector modules. When illuminated with ultraviolet light, the scintillating inner shield glows brightly.

Highest sensitivity detector ever for very light dark matter elementary particles. The origin of matter in the universe has puzzled physicists for generations. Today, we know that matter only accounts for 5% of our universe; another 25% is constituted of dark matter. And the remaining 70% is made up of dark energy. Dark matter itself represents an unsolved riddle.

Physicists believe that such dark matter is composed of (as yet undefined) elementary particles that stick together thanks to gravitational force. In a study recently published in EPJ C, scientists from the CRESST-II research project use the phonon-light technique to detect dark matter...