Featured Posts
Starts With a Bang!
22 Jan 2021, 15:02 UTC
We have two ways of measuring the expansion rate. Here’s the harder one.
Ask Ethan: How Does The CMB Reveal The Hubble Constant?
22 Jan 2021, 15:02 UTC
We have two ways of measuring the expansion rate. Here’s the harder one.
SciTech Daily
22 Jan 2021, 12:29 UTC
When our universe was very young, it was a dark place filled with a neutral and opaque gas. How that gas became transparent is something that scientists have been trying to understand for a long time.
Back to the Spectacular Firestorm of Star Birth at the Beginning of the Universe: Probing the First Galaxies With Webb
22 Jan 2021, 12:29 UTC
When our universe was very young, it was a dark place filled with a neutral and opaque gas. How that gas became transparent is something that scientists have been trying to understand for a long time.
Space News
20 Jan 2021, 21:23 UTC
As Joe Biden begins the first year of his presidency, there is still much we don’t know about where he and his vice president, Kamala Harris, stand on major issues in civil and national security space. The pandemic and economic recovery are sure to drive Biden’s initial agenda. There are, nonetheless, several key space issues the new administration will have to address. NASA’s Artemis program is now unlikely to meet its 2024 human landing goal, giving the administration the opportunity to revisit the program while enhancing the agency’s Earth science work. The growing population of satellites and debris may lead the administration to reexamine the Trump administration’s approach to civil space traffic management. The Space Force will continue to mature but faces growing pains. The Pentagon will also finish programs, from new launch vehicles to LEO constellations, started under the Trump administration
Space challenges for President Biden: Four issues for the next four years
20 Jan 2021, 21:23 UTC
As Joe Biden begins the first year of his presidency, there is still much we don’t know about where he and his vice president, Kamala Harris, stand on major issues in civil and national security space. The pandemic and economic recovery are sure to drive Biden’s initial agenda. There are, nonetheless, several key space issues the new administration will have to address. NASA’s Artemis program is now unlikely to meet its 2024 human landing goal, giving the administration the opportunity to revisit the program while enhancing the agency’s Earth science work. The growing population of satellites and debris may lead the administration to reexamine the Trump administration’s approach to civil space traffic management. The Space Force will continue to mature but faces growing pains. The Pentagon will also finish programs, from new launch vehicles to LEO constellations, started under the Trump administration
astrobites
20 Jan 2021, 17:37 UTC
We have learned a lot about fast radio bursts (FRBs) since the first one was discovered in 2007. These enigmatic bursts of radio emission, which are both extremely short, lasting only milliseconds, and extremely energetic, with fluxes of 10s to 100s of Jansky (or a few thousand times brighter than most pulsars), are one of the fastest growing fields in astronomy. While most bursts are one-off events, astronomers have now found not only one, but multiple FRBs that seem to repeat. A few have been localized to host galaxies, and a burst very similar to an FRB has been observed coming from a magnetar in our own Milky Way! New radio telescopes like the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) are already observing hundreds of FRBs, and telescopes in development like the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) will see many more!
FRB 20180916B Bursts Back Onto the Scene at the Lowest Frequencies to Date
20 Jan 2021, 17:37 UTC
We have learned a lot about fast radio bursts (FRBs) since the first one was discovered in 2007. These enigmatic bursts of radio emission, which are both extremely short, lasting only milliseconds, and extremely energetic, with fluxes of 10s to 100s of Jansky (or a few thousand times brighter than most pulsars), are one of the fastest growing fields in astronomy. While most bursts are one-off events, astronomers have now found not only one, but multiple FRBs that seem to repeat. A few have been localized to host galaxies, and a burst very similar to an FRB has been observed coming from a magnetar in our own Milky Way! New radio telescopes like the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) are already observing hundreds of FRBs, and telescopes in development like the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) will see many more!
SciTech Daily
20 Jan 2021, 15:13 UTC
For millennia humans have used maps to understand and navigate our world and put ourselves in context: we rely on maps to show us where we are, where we came from, and where we’re going. Astronomical maps continue this tradition on a vast scale.
Astronomers Have Created the Largest Ever Map of the Sky, Comprising Over a Billion Galaxies
20 Jan 2021, 15:13 UTC
For millennia humans have used maps to understand and navigate our world and put ourselves in context: we rely on maps to show us where we are, where we came from, and where we’re going. Astronomical maps continue this tradition on a vast scale.
Astronomy Now
19 Jan 2021, 16:36 UTC
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope to study a supernova remnant in the Small Magellanic Cloud have determined light from the blast reached Earth 1,700 years ago during the decline of the Roman Empire. While it would have been visible to inhabitants of the southern hemisphere, there are no known records of any observations. Located some 200,000 light years away, the remnant is known as 1E 0102.2-7219. As shown below, gaseous knots in the expanding cloud of debris that are headed in Earth’s general direction are shown in blue while those moving away appear read. The cloud is expanding at an average speed of 3.2 million kilometres per hour, or 2 million mph. By measuring the motions of 22 clumps of oxygen-rich clumps of debris, researchers were able to determine when the supernova must have occurred. Likewise, they estimated the collapsed neutron star created in the blast must be moving at more than 3 million kilometres per hour.
Hubble helps astronomers wind back clock on supernova blast
19 Jan 2021, 16:36 UTC
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope to study a supernova remnant in the Small Magellanic Cloud have determined light from the blast reached Earth 1,700 years ago during the decline of the Roman Empire. While it would have been visible to inhabitants of the southern hemisphere, there are no known records of any observations. Located some 200,000 light years away, the remnant is known as 1E 0102.2-7219. As shown below, gaseous knots in the expanding cloud of debris that are headed in Earth’s general direction are shown in blue while those moving away appear read. The cloud is expanding at an average speed of 3.2 million kilometres per hour, or 2 million mph. By measuring the motions of 22 clumps of oxygen-rich clumps of debris, researchers were able to determine when the supernova must have occurred. Likewise, they estimated the collapsed neutron star created in the blast must be moving at more than 3 million kilometres per hour.
Starts With a Bang!
18 Jan 2021, 15:03 UTC
If you thought it was just one rich region in space, look deeper and wider.
