Space

This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the planet Jupiter in a color composite of ultraviolet wavelengths. Released on Nov. 3, 2023, in honor of Jupiter reaching opposition, which occurs when the planet and the Sun are in opposite sides of the sky, this view of the gas giant planet includes the iconic, massive storm called the “Great Red Spot.” Though the storm appears red to the human eye, in this ultraviolet image it appears darker because high altitude haze particles absorb light at these wavelengths. The reddish, wavy polar hazes are absorbing slightly less of this light due to differences in either particle size, composition, or altitude.

Learn more about Hubble and how this type of data can help us learn more about our universe.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Wong (University of California – Berkeley); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

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Two galaxies are squaring off in Corvus. When two galaxies collide, the stars that compose them usually do not. That's because galaxies are mostly empty space and, however bright, stars only take up only a small amount of that space. During the slow, hundred million year collision, one galaxy can still rip the other apart gravitationally, and dust and gas common to both galaxies does collide. In this clash of the titans, dark dust pillars mark massive molecular clouds are being compressed during the galactic encounter, causing the rapid birth of millions of stars, some of which are gravitationally bound together in massive star clusters. (text from APOD) This image has been selected as APOD of 16th March 2014. The raw files comes from Hubble Legacy Archive.

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Joe Velaidum can't help but wonder what could have happened if he'd lingered outside his front door for just a couple of minutes longer before taking his dogs for a walk.

The timing of their departure that day last July proved lucky. Just seconds later, a meteorite would plummet onto the front walkway of Velaidum's home in Marshfield, Prince Edward Island, shattering on impact with a reverberating smack.

"The shocking thing for me is that I was standing right there a couple of minutes right before this impact," Velaidum told CBC News.

"If I'd have seen it, I probably would've been standing right there, so it probably would've ripped me in half."

[Image description: The image shows a bright white point of light surrounded by 17 regularly spaced, hazy dust shells at the bottom, right, and upper right, which look like tree rings. There is noticeably less color in the upper left. The central point, where the two stars are located, has a roughly hexagonal shape.]

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope James Webb Space Telescope have identified two stars responsible for generating carbon-rich dust a mere 5000 light-years away in our own Milky Way galaxy. As the massive stars in Wolf-Rayet 140 swing past one another on their elongated orbits, their winds collide and produce the carbon-rich dust. For a few months every eight years, the stars form a new shell of dust that expands outward — and may eventually go on to become part of stars that form elsewhere in our galaxy.

Every shell is racing away from the stars at more than 2600 kilometers per second, almost 1% the speed of light.

Wolf-Rayet 140 lies just over 5000 light-years away in our Milky Way galaxy.

See also:

Image from July 2022

Side by side comparison of 14 months difference (at 2600 km/s :O).

In the vastness of empty space surrounding Earth, the Moon is our closest celestial neighbor. Its face, periodically filled with light and devoured by darkness, has an ever-changing, but dependable presence in our skies.

In this article, we’ll learn about the Moon and its path around our planet, but to experience that journey first-hand, we have to enter the cosmos itself.

Breaking its previous record by flying just 3.8 million miles above the surface of the Sun, NASA's Parker Solar Probe hurtled through the solar atmosphere at a blazing 430,000 miles per hour — faster than any human-made object has ever moved. A beacon tone received late on Dec. 26 confirmed the spacecraft had made it through the encounter safely and is operating normally.

"Flying this close to the Sun is a historic moment in humanity's first mission to a star," said Nicky Fox, who leads the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "By studying the Sun up close, we can better understand its impacts throughout our solar system, including on the technology we use daily on Earth and in space, as well as learn about the workings of stars across the universe to aid in our search for habitable worlds beyond our home planet."

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover used its right-front navigation camera to capture this first view over the rim of Jezero Crater on Dec. 10, 2024, the 1,354th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, when it reached the end of its long climb from the crater floor.

The rover is looking west in this image from a location nicknamed "Lookout Hill." Not visible is "Witch Hazel Hill," a scientifically significant rocky outcrop that Perseverance is headed toward. Once there, the rover will spend about six months exploring the area. Scientists are excited to explore the region outside of Jezero because the rover will encounter rocks excavated by a monster meteor impact that formed the crater an estimated 3.9 billion years ago. These rocks could not only be early Martian crust, but among the oldest rocks found anywhere in the solar system.

A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet's geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA's Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

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Much of what we know about them was gathered by Nasa’s Voyager 2 spacecraft which visited nearly 40 years ago.

But a new analysis shows that Voyager's visit coincided with a powerful solar storm, which led to a misleading idea of what the Uranian system is really like.

But the new analysis has solved the decades-long mystery. It shows that Voyager 2 flew past on a bad day.

The new research shows that just as Voyager 2 flew past Uranus, the Sun was raging, creating a powerful solar wind that might have blown the material away and temporarily distorted the magnetic field.

So, for 40 years we have had an incorrect view of what Uranus and its five largest moons are normally like, according to Dr William Dunn of University College London.

“These results suggest that the Uranian system could be much more exciting than previously thought. There could be moons there that could have the conditions that are necessary for life, they might have oceans below the surface that could be teeming with fish!”.

What's the closest active galaxy to planet Earth? That would be Centaurus A, cataloged as NGC 5128, which is only 12 million light-years distant. Forged in a collision of two otherwise normal galaxies, Centaurus A shows several distinctive features including a dark dust lane across its center, outer shells of stars and gas, and jets of particles shooting out from a supermassive black hole at its center. The featured image captures all of these in a composite series of visible light images totaling over 310 hours captured over the past 10 years with a homebuilt telescope operating in Auckland, New Zealand. The brightness of Cen A's center from low-energy radio waves to high-energy gamma rays underlies its designation as an active galaxy.

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The European Southern Observatory released this new image of the Milky Way’s black hole March 27, 2024. The newly released image shows the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy in polarized light. Polarized light enables astronomers to map a black hole’s magnetic field lines. The discovery also suggests our galaxy’s black hole may be harboring a hidden jet. Image via EHT Collaboration/ ESO.

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If you could stand on Mars -- what might you see? You might look out over a vast orange landscape covered with rocks under a dusty orange sky, with a blue-tinted Sun over the horizon, and odd-shaped water clouds hovering high overhead. This was just the view captured last March by NASA's rolling explorer, Perseverance. The orange coloring is caused by rusted iron in the Martian dirt, some of which is small enough to be swept up by winds into the atmosphere. The blue tint near the rising Sun is caused by blue light being preferentially scattered out from the Sun by the floating dust. The light-colored clouds on the right are likely composed of water-ice and appear high in the Martian atmosphere. The shapes of some of these clouds are unusual for Earth and remain a topic of research.

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[Image description: Hundreds of galaxies appear in this view, which is set against the black background of space. There are many overlapping objects at various distances. They include large, blue foreground stars, some with eight diffraction spikes, and white and pink spiral and elliptical galaxies. Numerous tiny orange dots appear throughout the scene.]

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2428a/

[Image description: Image of a galaxy on the black background of space. The galaxy is a very oblong, blue disk that extends from left to right at an angle (from about 10 o’clock to 5 o’clock). The galaxy has a small bright core at the centre. There is an inner disk that is clearer, with speckles of stars scattered throughout. The outer disk of the galaxy is whiteish-blue, and clumpy, like clouds in the sky. There are different coloured dots, distant galaxies, speckled among the black background of space surrounding the galaxy.]

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2427a/

Experience Earth, our solar system, nearby asteroids, the universe, and the spacecraft exploring them with immersive real-time 3D web-based apps. Start exploring your solar system now!

In this photograph astronaut and STS-113 mission specialist John B. Herrington, (center frame), participates in the mission's third spacewalk. The forward section of the Space Shuttle Endeavour is in right frame.

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https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap241104.html

Meghan Everett, NASA’s deputy chief scientist for the International Space Station program, said, “While some of you might think that wood in space seems a little counterintuitive, researchers hope this investigation demonstrates that a wooden satellite can be more sustainable and less polluting for the environment than conventional satellites.”

LignoSat was created by researchers at Kyoto University along with a homebuilding company, according to Reuters.

“With timber, a material we can produce by ourselves, we will be able to build houses, live and work in space forever,” Takao Doi, an astronaut who now studies human space activities at Kyoto University, told Reuters.

The Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates Webb on behalf of NASA and its international partners, said last week that it received 2,377 unique proposals from science teams seeking observing time on the observatory. The institute released a call for proposals earlier this year for the so-called "Cycle 4" series of observations with Webb.

This volume of proposals represents around 78,000 hours of observing time with Webb, nine times more than the telescope's available capacity for scientific observations in this cycle. The previous observing cycle had a similar "oversubscription rate" but had less overall observing time available to the science community.

More than 600 scientists will review the proposals and select the most promising ones for time on Webb. The largest share of proposals would involve observing "high-redshift" galaxies among the first generation of galaxies that formed after the Big Bang. Galaxies this old and distant have their light stretched to longer wavelengths due to the expansion of the Universe. Research involving exoplanet atmospheres and stars and stellar populations were the second- and third-most popular science categories in this cycle.

[Image description: Two spiral galaxies take up almost the entire view and appear to be overlapping. They are angled from top left to bottom right. The galaxy at left, IC 2163, is smaller and more compact than the galaxy at right, NGC 2207. The background of space is black, dotted with tiny foreground stars and extremely distant galaxies.]

https://esawebb.org/images/weic2426b/