Enlarge / An artist’s impression of a neutron star getting ready to blast its neighbor with radiation. (credit: NASA) Our Sun is on its own in this galaxy, without a nearby companion orbiting with it. But binary star systems are pretty common, and our nearest neighbor appears to be a three-star system. Given how many […]
Enlarge / A very detailed view of one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies. (credit: NASA/STScI) In mid-March, NASA released an image from the Webb Space Telescope that demonstrated that its primary mirror reached the point where it focused light as finely as physics would allow for hardware of its size. That was a critical […]
Artist’s animation of a micronova, a new type of stellar explosion. Credit: European Southern Observatory. Astronomers have discovered highly localized thermonuclear blasts coming from the surface of three white dwarf stars—unusually short-lived events they have dubbed “micronovae.” They’re similar to novas, except these blasts can burn through a tremendous amount of material in just a […]
Enlarge (credit: NASA/CXO/University College London/W. Dunn et al; Optical: W. M. Keck Observatory ) Late in 2021, the astronomy community released its decadal survey , a roadmap of scientific priorities for the next 10 years, which describes the hardware we’d need to build in order to achieve them. That survey was focused on distant objects […]
Enlarge / Artist’s illustration of NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, set to launch in August 2022. The Psyche mission will explore a metal-rich asteroid of the same name that lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU) Ars Technica had the rare opportunity to tour NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California this week, […]
Enlarge / Fragment of the Antikythera mechanism, circa 205 BC, housed in the collection of National Archaeological Museum, Athens. (credit: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Image) The mysterious Antikythera mechanism—an ancient device believed to have been used for tracking the heavens—has fascinated scientists and the public alike since it was first recovered from a shipwreck over […]
Enlarge / Image of the AB Aurigae system, with details of the object shown at the right. (credit: NASA, ESA, Thayne Currie) On some levels, forming stars and planets is simple: They form where there’s more stuff. So, while the raw material for a star may be a diffuse cloud of gas, the distribution of […]
Enlarge / Wright Mons, at center. Note the lumpy nature of its flanks extends to other nearby areas. (credit: NASA, Johns Hopkins Univ./APL, Southwest Research Institute) When we look at the features on other bodies in our Solar System, there are often obvious analogs much closer to home. For example, sets of parallel ridges on […]
Enlarge / The string of red dots represents the area of maximum magnification, with the location of Earendel indicated by the white arrow. (credit: NASA, ESA, Brian Welch (JHU), Dan Coe (STScI) ) We don’t fully understand what the Universe’s first stars looked like. We know they must have formed from hydrogen and helium since […]
Enlarge / Data from SARAO’s MeerKAT radio telescope data (green) showing the odd radio circles, is overlaid on optical and near infrared data from the Dark Energy Survey. (credit: J. English (U. Manitoba)/EMU/MeerKAT/DES(CTIO)) Astronomers have been puzzling over the nature and origin of rare, mysterious radio circles in space ever since the objects were first […]