Space

A recent model says it provides the first characterization of the progenitor for a hydrogen-deficient supernova. Their simulation predicts that a bright hot star, which is the binary companion to an exploding object, remains after the explosion so they secured observation time with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to search for such a remaining star.   Astronomers have been searching for the elusive progenitors of hydrogen-deficient stellar explosions without success. June 2013 saw the appearance of supernova iPTF13bvn and the subsequent detection of an object at the same location…

Credit: Niall Carson/PA By Saskia Vermeylen, Lancaster University Whether you’re into mining, energy or tourism, there are lots of reasons to explore space. Some “pioneers” even believe humanity’s survival depends on colonizing celestial bodies such as the moon and Mars, both becoming central hubs for our further journey into the cosmos. Lunar land peddlers have started doing deals already – a one-acre plot can be yours for just £16.75. More seriously, big corporations, rich entrepreneurs and even US politicians are eying up the moon and its untapped resources. Russia has plans for a manned…

An artist's impression of a galactic protocluster forming in the early universe. Credit: European Southern Observatory, CC BY By Nick Seymour, Curtin University Clusters of galaxies have back-stories worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster: their existences are marked by violence, death and birth, arising after extragalactic pile-ups where groups of galaxies crashed into each other. But clusters in our patch of the universe are pretty unexciting places, filled with old massive galaxies and low star-formation rates. A mystery that’s hounded astronomers is how – and when – did clusters manage to grow…

On April 23rd, 2014, NASA's Swift satellite detected the strongest, hottest, and longest-lasting sequence of stellar flares ever seen from a red dwarf star - 10,000 times more powerful than the largest solar flare ever recorded. 'Just produced' in the title is cosmologically speaking -  the "superflare" came from one of the stars in a close binary system known as DG Canum Venaticorum (DG CVn), which is 60 light-years away. Both stars are dim red dwarfs with masses and sizes about one-third of our sun's. They orbit each other at about three times Earth's average distance from the sun…

Astronomers have used the APEX telescope to probe a huge galaxy cluster that is forming in the early Universe and revealed that much of the star formation taking place is not only hidden by dust, but also occurring in unexpected places. The Spiderweb Galaxy (formally known as MRC 1138-262) and its surroundings have been studied for twenty years, using ESO and other telescopes, and is thought to be one of the best examples of a protocluster in the process of assembly, more than ten billion years ago. This is the first time that a full census of the star formation in such an object has been…

COLUMBUS, Ohio—Our view of other solar systems just got a little more familiar, with the discovery of a planet 25,000 light-years away that resembles our own Uranus. Astronomers have discovered hundreds of planets around the Milky Way, including rocky planets similar to Earth and gas planets similar to Jupiter, but there is a third type of planet in our solar system — part gas, part ice, like Uranus and Neptune — called an "ice giant" and researchers have spotted one outside Sol's orbit for the first time. But let's not build a cute robot and send it there just yet; it's 25,000 light years…

Dark matter is ill-defined and never detected so how can a group of astronomers say current measurements are off by 50 percent? Most of the matter in the universe is hidden. It's not stars, it's not planets, it's not dust. No one knows what it is. But it must be something or gravity does not work. That something is the mystery. Using inference, if 4 percent of the universe is matter, and around 25 percent is dark matter (what is the rest? Dark energy, an even more fanciful conjecture) then the 'weight' of  dark matter just in our galaxy is 800,000,000,000 times the mass of the Sun, say a…

Sharing travel tips is always a smart thing to do ahead of a long and challenging journey. It’s even more important when you’re embarking on a million miles long mission to asteroid. Being aware of that, University of Arizona (UA) scientists met last week with their colleagues from the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), to discuss the emerging problems concerning asteroid-bound probes they plan to send. UA leads the OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu, under a contract with NASA, while ISAS’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft is slated…

Artistic impression of the Milky Way galaxy. The blue halo of material surrounding the galaxy indicates the expected distribution of the mysterious dark matter. ESO/L. Calçada, CC BY By Geraint Lewis, University of Sydney While invisible, dark matter completely dominates our Milky Way. But recent measurements of just how much dark matter there is have revealed a bit of a mystery. In a paper published today in the Astrophysical Journal, we show that the galaxy is a whole lot skinnier than previously thought. How can astronomers be struggling to measure such a dominant part of our cosmic home,…

A team of scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to make the most detailed global map yet of the glow from a giant, oddball planet orbiting another star, an object twice as massive as Jupiter and hot enough to melt steel, called WASP-43b. WASP-43b is a world of extremes, where winds howl at the speed of sound from a 3,000-degree-Fahrenheit dayside to a pitch-black nightside when temperatures plunge to a relatively cool 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, still hot enough to melt silver. The map provides information about temperatures at different layers of the planet's atmosphere and traces…