pale blue dot
Asteroids – the bits and pieces leftover from the formation of the inner planets – are a source of great curiosity for those keen to learn about the building blocks of our solar system, and to probe the chemistry of life. Humans are also considering mining asteroids for metals, but one of the crucial reasons …
Continue reading “Here’s how scientists planning to deflect asteroids that might damage Earth”
There was a lot of excitement when the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration showed the world the first ever image of a black hole back in April 2019. Weighing in at 6.5 million times the mass of our Sun, this supermassive black hole is located in the galaxy Messier 87, or M87, some 55 million light …
In fact, contrary to the popular belief, the lengths of day and night aren’t equal on an equinox. There’s another term for this: equilux.
Science writer Pat Brennan has published a great article on the NASA exoplanets website titled “Life in the Universe: What are the Odds?”. In the article, he published a diagram showing the habitable zones of our solar system, and the TRAPPIST-1 system. The amazing thing is how cramped the TRAPPIST-1 system: the orbits of the …
Continue reading “You’ll be amazed how cramped the TRAPPIST-1 System is”
Michael Garrett, University of Manchester The US$100m (£70m) Breakthrough Listen Initiative, founded by Russian billionaire, technology and science investor Yuri Milner and his wife Julia, has identified a mysterious radio signal that seems to come from the nearest star to the Sun – Proxima Centauri. This has generated a flood of excitement in the press …
Understanding the stellar population of our galaxy could reveal a great deal, not only about our own home but also about the universe as a whole. So-called galactic archaeology can reveal how galaxies take shape and explain some of the interesting complexities of our own.
You decided to buy your first telescope, but don’t know where to start? Here’s a simple guide for you.
The Milky Way might be right on our cosmic doorstep, but a group of astronomers suspect that the way we currently study it is stunting our understanding. Professor Ralf Klessen at Heidelberg University in Germany is one of four researchers who have recently begun a six-year project, ECOGAL, to try something new: imagine our home …
Continue reading “Interview: It’s time to rethink the Milky Way”
NASA announced a new citizen science project called “Planet Patrol” which lets the volunteers help to find exoplanets using TESS Space Telescope (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) data. It is similar to another NASA citizen science project, “Backyard Worlds”, where volunteers or the “citizen scientists” are checking telescope images the same way the American astronomer Clyde …
Continue reading “NASA’s Planet Patrol Project lets the volunteers help to find exoplanets”
On September 6, 2020, French astrophotographer Thierry Legault (@ThierryLegault) went to the South of Lisbon to capture the event of the Moon passing in front of Mars. The result is this spectacular video, titled “Occultation of Mars by the Moon” by Legault himself.
