Category Archives: Space

Having survived its eight winter in a row, the Opportunity rover continues to operate long past its original, anticipated lifespan.
The post NASA’s Opportunity Rover Withstands Another Harsh Winter on Mars appeared first on Universe Today. […]Read More

University of Canterbury astrophysicist Dr Simone Scaringi has made an unexpected and exciting new discovery related to the way white dwarfs grow in space. […]Read More

Two years ago, scientists from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detected gravitational waves for the first time, proving Einstein’s theory of relativity and his prediction of their existence. The waves were triggered by two black holes colliding. […]Read More

There was much excitement when scientists witnessed the violent collision of two ultra-dense, massive stars more than 100m light years from the Earth earlier this year. Not only did they catch the resulting gravitational waves – ripples in the fabric of spacetime – they also saw a practically instantaneous flash of light. This is exciting in itself and was the first direct evidence for a merger of neutron stars. […]Read More

The OmegaCAM camera on ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope has captured this glittering view of the stellar nursery called Sharpless 29. Many astronomical phenomena can be seen in this giant image, including cosmic dust and gas clouds that reflect, absorb, and re-emit the light of hot young stars within the nebula. […]Read More

When and how were the first stars in the universe born? The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio telescope in the desert of Western Australia, one of the largest of its kind, was constructed to clarify this and many other mysteries. The MWA is an international radio-astronomy project conducted by seven countries including Japan and Australia. In Japan, Kumamoto University (main), Nagoya University, Kagoshima University, University of Tokyo, Tohoku University, and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan are participating in the effort. Construction to increase the sensitivity of the MWA began in 2016, and was completed in October of this year (2017). The antennas were doubled in number to 4,096 over a 5 km2 area, which greatly improved the sensitivity of the telescope. The upgraded MWA will seek answers to mysteries of the universe that began 13.7 billion years ago. […]Read More

The IAU just approved the names of 86 new stars, the majority of which are derived from Chinese, Hindu, Aboriginal, South African, Coptic, Mayan, and Polynesian traditions.
The post 86 Stars Just got Official Names from the IAU appeared first on Universe Today. […]Read More

An international team of astronomers has created the largest map of the movements of galaxies within our Supercluster to date.
The post New Map Shows the Motion of all the Galaxies in Our Supercluster appeared first on Universe Today. […]Read More

Where do most of the elements essential for life on Earth come from? The answer: inside the furnaces of stars and the explosions that mark the end of some stars’ lives. […]Read More

(Phys.org)—Astronomers report the detection of new eruptions in two luminous blue variables, known as R 40 and R 110, located in the Magellanic Clouds. The finding, presented December 5 in a paper published on the arXiv pre-print repository, could shed new light on the final phases of stellar evolution process. […]Read More