Astronomy News

Betelgeuse Isn’t Dimming Because It’s About To Explode — It’s Just Dusty

This image from ALMA shows the M2 spectral-type supergiant star Betelgeuse. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / E. O’Gorman / P. Kervella.
Mar 6, 2020 by News Staff

On February 15, 2020, a team of U.S. astronomers observed Betelgeuse, a dimming red supergiant located approximately 650 light-years away from Earth, using the DeVeny optical spectrograph on the 4.3-m Lowell Discovery Telescope. They found that the star is significantly warmer than expected if the recent dimming were caused by a cooling of the star’s surface. The new calculations lend support to the theory that Betelgeuse — as many red supergiant...

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An artist’s impression of W43A. Image credit: NAOJ.

ALMA Captures Bipolar Planetary Nebula in the Making

Mar 6, 2020 by News Staff

W43A, an aged star located some 7,000 light-years away in the constellation Aquila, ejected high-speed bipolar jets less than 60 years ago, according to...

Wells et al estimate that there should be at least 10 -- currently undiscovered -- exoplanets which are favorably located to detect the Earth and are capable of sustaining life as we know it. Image credit: NASA.

Study: Life Might Be Common in Inflationary Universe

Mar 6, 2020 by News Staff

In a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports, University of Tokyo’s Professor Tomonori Totani looked at how the building blocks of life could...

An artist’s conception of a ringed planet transiting in front of its host star. Image credit: Robin Dienel / Carnegie Institution for Science.

Super-Puff Exoplanets May Actually Have Huge Ring Systems

Mar 4, 2020 by News Staff

Super-puffs, an intriguing, growing class of exoplanets, are the objects with exceptionally large radii for their masses and thus correspondingly low densities....

The structure of our Milky Way Galaxy with its warped Galactic disk, where the majority of its hundreds of billions of stars reside. Data from ESA’s Gaia spacecraft recently proved that the disk’s warp is precessing, essentially moving around similarly to a wobbling spinning top. The speed of the warp’s rotation is so high that it must have been caused by a rather powerful event, astronomers believe, perhaps an ongoing collision with another, smaller, galaxy which sends ripples through the disk like a rock thrown into water. Image credit: Stefan Payne-Wardenaar / NASA / JPL-Caltech / ESA.

Milky Way’s Warp Caused by Recent or Ongoing Encounter with Satellite Galaxy

Mar 3, 2020 by News Staff

Data from ESA’s Gaia star-mapping satellite show that the warped disk of our Milky Way Galaxy precesses, or wobbles, similarly to the motion of a spinning...

An artist’s impression of two white dwarfs in the process of merging; depending on the combined mass, the system may explode in a thermonuclear supernova, or coalesce into a single heavy white dwarf, as with WD J0551+4135. Image credit: Mark Garlick / University of Warwick.

Astronomers Spot Ultra-Massive White Dwarf with Unique Atmosphere

Mar 3, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers have discovered an ultra-massive white dwarf with a unique carbon-hydrogen mixed atmosphere. Named WD J055134.612+413531.09 (WD J0551+4135...

Sizes of 17 new planet candidates, compared to Mars, Earth, and Neptune. The planet in green is KIC 7340288b. Image credit: Michelle Kunimoto.

Astronomers Discover Seventeen New Extrasolar Planets

Mar 2, 2020 by News Staff

Using data gathered by NASA’s Kepler space telescope, a team of astronomers in Canada has discovered 17 new exoplanets, including an Earth-sized world....

This Hubble image shows the central part of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 3887. The image is made up of observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in the infrared and optical parts of the spectrum. It is based on data obtained through three filters. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / P. Erwin et al.

Hubble Space Telescope Zooms In on NGC 3887

Mar 2, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured an amazing photo of the central region of a barred spiral galaxy called NGC 3887. This Hubble image shows...

Evidence for the biggest black hole eruption seen in the Universe comes from a combination of X-ray data from Chandra and XMM-Newton, and the Murchison Widefield Array and Giant Metrewave Telescope, as shown here. The eruption is generated by a black hole located in the central galaxy of the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster, which has blasted out jets and carved a large cavity in the surrounding hot gas. Image credit: NASA / CXC / NRL / S. Giacintucci et al / ESA / XMM-Newton / NCRA / TIFR / GMRT / 2MASS / UMass / IPAC-Caltech / NSF.

Universe’s Most Powerful Black Hole Eruption Spotted

Feb 28, 2020 by News Staff

Using data from ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s Chandra X-ray space observatories, along with two ground-based radio telescopes in Australia and India,...

This artist’s impression shows planets K2-18b and c and their host star. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / M. Kornmesser.

Super-Earth Exoplanet K2-18b Could Have Right Conditions for Life

Feb 27, 2020 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, UK, has found K2-18b, a planet of almost nine Earth masses in orbit...

2020 CD3 is estimated to be only between one and six meters across. Image credit: Jonny Lindner.

Earth Has New, Temporary Moon: 2020 CD3

Feb 27, 2020 by The Conversation

The Minor Planet Centre has just announced that our planet has been orbited by a second moon for the past three years or so. Designated 2020 CD3, the object...

This image, taken by the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph on the Gemini South telescope on Cerro Pachón in Chile, shows the planetary nebula CVMP 1. Image credit: Gemini Observatory / NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory / AURA.

Astronomers Snap Photo of Beautiful Planetary Nebula

Feb 27, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Gemini South telescope on the summit of Cerro Pachon in Chile have taken a picture of CVMP 1, a planetary nebula located some 6,500...

This composite image shows the Orion Molecular Clouds, the target of the VANDAM survey. Yellow dots are the locations of the observed protostars on a blue background image made by ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory. Side panels show nine young protostars imaged by ALMA (blue) and the VLA (orange). Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / J. Tobin / AUI / NSF / S. Dagnello / Herschel / ESA.

Astronomers Observe Hundreds of Protoplanetary Disks in Orion Molecular Clouds

Feb 26, 2020 by News Staff

Using NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have captured images of 328...

An artist’s impression of an L dwarf star, a star with so little mass that it is only just above the boundary of actually being a star, caught in the act of emitting an enormous superflare of X-rays, as detected by ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray space observatory. Image credit: ESA.

XMM-Newton Detects X-ray Superflare from Ultracool Dwarf

Feb 25, 2020 by News Staff

Using data from the European Photon Imaging Camera (EPIC) onboard ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory, astronomers have detected for the first time a...

These images, taken by the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, show the asteroid Pallas. Image credit: ESO / M. Marsset et al / MISTRAL algorithm, ONERA & CNRS.

Astronomers Snap New Images of Huge Asteroid Pallas

Feb 24, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research (SPHERE) imager, an instrument installed on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT)...

This Hubble image shows NGC 691, a spiral galaxy located 125 million light-years away in the constellation Aries. The image is made up of observations from Hubble’s WFC3 instrument in the infrared and optical parts of the spectrum. Four filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / A. Riess et al.

Hubble Space Telescope Views NGC 691

Feb 24, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced this beautiful image of the unbarred spiral galaxy NGC 691. This Hubble image shows NGC 691, a spiral...

This Hubble image shows Messier 104. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA.

Strikingly Metal-Rich Halo of Messier 104 Suggests Turbulent Past

Feb 21, 2020 by News Staff

Messier 104, a lenticular galaxy located 28 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo, now has a new chapter in its story — an extended...

Breakthrough Listen Finds No Alien Signals from Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov

Feb 20, 2020 by News Staff

Breakthrough Listen, the largest ever scientific research program aimed at finding evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth, has released data from its...

Range-Doppler radar image (colorized) of the binary near-Earth asteroid 2020 BX12. Image credit: Arecibo Observatory.

Arecibo Observatory Reveals Near-Earth Asteroid 2020 BX12 Has Large Moon

Feb 20, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using a radio telescope at the Arecibo Observatory have captured the first images of the recently-discovered near-Earth asteroid 2020 BX12....

This is an artistic impression of a red dwarf star’s magnetic interaction with its exoplanet. Image credit: Danielle Futselaar, Artsource.nl.

Astronomers Find New Way to Study Planets around Red Dwarf Stars

Feb 19, 2020 by News Staff

Using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope, astronomers have observed radio waves that carry the distinct signatures of extraterrestrial aurorae,...

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