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Astronomers Disprove Long-Held Belief About Galaxy Density
Astronomers Disprove Long-Held Belief About Galaxy Density by Simon Mansfield Sydney, Australia (SPX) Aug 20, 2024 An international team of astronomers has overturned a longstanding belief that stars and dark matter interact in a mysterious way to create uniform density structures across different galaxies. This finding, published in ‘Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society…
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How writing about space helped these two authors through their cancer treatment
Ceridwen Dovey was working on the final instalment of her new short story collection, Only the Astronauts, when she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. The story is about NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2, twin spacecraft launched in 1977 and still exploring space to this day. During the stressful time of her diagnosis, she found pondering…
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Space photo of the week: James Webb telescope catches baby stars roaring to life
What it is: The Serpens Nebula Where it is: 1,300 light-years away, in the constellation Serpens When it was shared: Aug. 12, 2024 Why it’s so special: This is a new image of an old favorite, the Serpens Nebula, where a cloud of gas and dust is lit up by starlight. Using its infrared capabilities,…
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Stranded in Space? NASA Doesn’t See the Starliner Astronauts That Way.
NASA doesn’t say the Boeing Starliner astronauts are ‘stranded’ on the space station, but it’s a word that a lot of people are using. If you go somewhere expecting an eight-day trip and end up not being able to leave for eight months, most people would consider that “stranded.” That is what has happened to…
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Astronomers find black hole’s favorite snack: ‘The star appears to be living to die another day’
Astronomers have succeeded in forecasting the meal timings of a colossal black hole after watching it devour a nearby star in bits and pieces, they announced earlier this week, marking a step forward in understanding the elusive eating behavior of these cosmic voids. The data behind the forecasts was beamed home in 2018, when an…
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Archaeologists conduct first ‘space excavation’ on International Space Station
A sample location from the Sampling Quadrangle Assemblages Research Experiment (SQuARE), Square 03 in the starboard Maintenance Work Area of the International Space Station. An open crew berth is visible at right. The yellow dotted line indicates the boundaries of the sample area. Credit: NASA/ISSAP/Walsh et al., 2024, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 New results from…
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Perseid meteor shower rains ‘shooting stars’ over Stonehenge in glorious astrophotography image
The Perseids, one of the year’s most prolific meteor showers, peaked this week, raining dozens of “shooting stars” per hour through Earth’s skies. Some lucky stargazers caught a double feature of meteors and dazzling auroras, which were triggered by a spree of powerful solar eruptions earlier in the week. Others, like U.K.-based astrophotographer Josh Dury,…
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Atomic clocks on the Moon could create ‘lunar positioning system’
<a href="https://physicsworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/14-8-24-Lunar-positioning-system.jpg" data-fancybox data-src="https://physicsworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/14-8-24-Lunar-positioning-system.jpg" data-caption="Lunar positioning system Artist’s impression of an artificial satellite orbiting the Moon. (Courtesy: NASA)”> Lunar positioning system Artist’s impression of an artificial satellite orbiting the Moon. (Courtesy: NASA) Atomic clocks on the Moon. It might sound like a futuristic concept, but atomic clocks already abound in space. They can be found…
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Coca-Cola Space Science Center to host “Astronomy Night” Aug. 17
COLUMBUS, Ga. (WTVM) -The Coca-Cola Space and Science Center invites community members to one of their free “Astronomy Nights.” The event will be held Aug. 17. It will begin at 9 p.m. in the Omnisphere Planetarium at the center. During the event, Dr. Rosa Williams will point out constellations and bright objects in the sky.…
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How An Astronomer Responded when Space Junk Fell on a Nearby Farm
Rachel Feltman: If you’re listening to this podcast, chances are pretty good that you’ve heard about the problem of space junk—the countless pieces of trash from dead satellites, old rockets and other assorted space infrastructure orbiting our planet that can travel as fast as 22,000 miles per hour or more. You may also know that…
