https://phys.org/space-news/ en-us Phys.org provides the latest news on astronomy and space exploration. NASA's InSight mission provides data from the surface of Mars. Its seismometer, equipped with electronics built at ETH Zurich, not only records marsquakes, but unexpectedly reacts to solar eclipses as well. When the Martian moon, Phobos moves directly in front of the sun, the instrument tips slightly to one side. This miniscule effect could aid researchers in determining the planet's interior. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-solar-eclipse-mars-affects-interior.html Space Exploration Fri, 04 Sep 2020 09:10:34 EDT news518429430 The absolute model age (AMA), or geologic age of Finsen crater on the moon's far side is determined to be about 3.5 billion years (Ga) based on crater counting method, according to a study published in Icarus. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-geologic-age-finsen-crater-side.html Space Exploration Fri, 04 Sep 2020 07:08:23 EDT news518422100 A team of astronomers have identified the first direct evidence that groups of stars can tear apart their planet-forming disc, leaving it warped and with tilted rings. This new research suggests exotic planets, not unlike Tatooine in Star Wars, may form in inclined rings in bent discs around multiple stars. The results were made possible thanks to observations with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). https://phys.org/news/2020-09-planet-forming-disc-torn-central-stars.html Astronomy Thu, 03 Sep 2020 14:00:03 EDT news518345172 Europe's Vega rocket returned to the skies on Wednesday from French Guiana in its first mission since a failed launch last year. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-vega-rocket-french-guiana.html Space Exploration Thu, 03 Sep 2020 04:05:35 EDT news518324733 A lopsided merger of two black holes may have an oddball origin story, according to a new study by researchers at MIT and elsewhere. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-unexpected-story-lopsided-black-hole.html Astronomy Thu, 03 Sep 2020 03:59:43 EDT news518324375 To the surprise of many planetary scientists, the oxidized iron mineral hematite has been discovered at high latitudes on the Moon, according to a study published today in Science Advances led by Shuai Li, assistant researcher at the Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology (HIGP) in the UH Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). https://phys.org/news/2020-09-earth-oxygen-rusted-moon-billions.html Space Exploration Wed, 02 Sep 2020 14:00:09 EDT news518248440 What if impact craters, long seen as harbingers of death, turned out to be the cradle of life? https://phys.org/news/2020-09-meteorite-impacts-life-earth.html Astrobiology Wed, 02 Sep 2020 12:38:26 EDT news518269102 Black holes can expel a thousand times more matter than they capture. The mechanism that governs both ejection and capture is the accretion disk, a vast mass of gas and dust spiraling around the black hole at extremely high speeds. The disk is hot and emits light as well as other forms of electromagnetic radiation. Part of the orbiting matter is pulled toward the center and disappears behind the event horizon, the threshold beyond which neither matter nor light can escape. Another, much larger, part is pushed further out by the pressure of the radiation emitted by the disk itself. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-universal-mechanism-ejection-black-holes.html Astronomy Wed, 02 Sep 2020 12:25:21 EDT news518268314 An analytical breakthrough that could significantly improve our chances of finding extra-terrestrial life in our galaxy has been discovered by a team at The University of Manchester. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-breakthrough-narrows-intelligent-life-milky.html Astronomy Wed, 02 Sep 2020 09:30:01 EDT news518257353 Using the Lijiang Observatory, astronomers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have inspected a gamma-ray blazar known as S5 0716+714. The observations provided important insights into the spectral behavior of this source, finding that it is brightness-dependent. The study was published August 26 on the arXiv.org preprint repository. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-chinese-astronomers-spectral-behavior-gamma-ray.html Astronomy Wed, 02 Sep 2020 09:10:01 EDT news518251072 For all its vast emptiness, the universe is humming with activity in the form of gravitational waves. Produced by extreme astrophysical phenomena, these reverberations ripple forth and shake the fabric of space-time, like the clang of a cosmic bell. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-ligo-virgo-detectors-massive-gravitational-wave.html Astronomy Wed, 02 Sep 2020 08:00:03 EDT news518238766 Scientists observed what appears to be a bulked-up black hole tangling with a more ordinary one. The research team, which includes physicists from the University of Maryland, detected two black holes merging, but one of the black holes was 1 1/2 times more massive than any ever observed in a black hole collision. The researchers believe the heavier black hole in the pair may be the result of a previous merger between two black holes.This type of hierarchical combining of black holes has been hypothesized in the past but the observed event, labeled GW190521, would be the first evidence for such activity. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration (LSC) and Virgo Collaboration announced the discovery in two papers published September 2, 2020, in the journals Physical Review Letters and Astrophysical Journal Letters. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-heaviest-black-hole-merger-gravitational.html Astronomy Wed, 02 Sep 2020 08:00:02 EDT news518238623 An alert pops up in your email: The latest spacecraft observations are ready. You now have 24 hours to scour 84 hours-worth of data, selecting the most promising split-second moments you can find. The data points you choose, depending on how you rank them, will download from the spacecraft in the highest possible resolution; researchers may spend months analyzing them. Everything else will be overwritten like it was never collected at all. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-magnetic-eruptions-space-ai.html Astronomy Space Exploration Wed, 02 Sep 2020 07:46:16 EDT news518251570 What looks like an engine made its way to space and back last November. While the hardware of the Perwaves experiment will not end up in your car, results from this research could lead to more efficient and carbon-free fuel in the future. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-perwaves-space-future-fuels.html Space Exploration Wed, 02 Sep 2020 07:42:29 EDT news518251345 The enigmatic variations of light in a binary system, located in Sagittarius constellation, could be explained by the presence of a variable gas disc around a hot star that revolves around a cooler star. These are the conclusions of researchers from Chile, Serbia and Poland, and published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-disc-gas-mysterious-sagittarius-constellation.html Astronomy Wed, 02 Sep 2020 00:00:01 EDT news518175804 Astronomers have known for two decades that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, but the physics of this expansion remains a mystery. Now, a team of researchers at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa have made a novel prediction—the dark energy responsible for this accelerating growth comes from a vast sea of compact objects spread throughout the voids between galaxies. This conclusion is part of a new study published in The Astrophysical Journal. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-candidate-mysterious-dark-energy.html Astronomy Tue, 01 Sep 2020 12:36:29 EDT news518182584 The Sun is our star and has a profound influence on our planet, life, and civilization. By studying the magnetism on the Sun, we can understand its influence on Earth and minimize damage of satellites and technological infrastructure. The GREGOR telescope allows scientists to resolve details as small as 50 km on the Sun, which is a tiny fraction of the solar diameter of 1.4 million km. This is as if one saw a needle on a soccer field perfectly sharp from a distance of one kilometer. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-solar-telescope-gregor-unveils-magnetic.html Astronomy Space Exploration Tue, 01 Sep 2020 12:10:28 EDT news518181025 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) astronomers have detected 18 very metal-poor stars in the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy. They found that one of the stars from the sample has an extremely low metallicity, slightly below -3.0. The study was reported in a paper published August 22 on the arXiv preprint repository. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-astronomers-metal-poor-stars-sagittarius-dwarf.html Astronomy Tue, 01 Sep 2020 09:00:01 EDT news518163610 Mars is often a very dynamic place due to its atmosphere and how it interacts with the surface. At present, we're in the "windy season" in Gale crater. This means that we're seeing increased aeolian (meaning "related to the wind") activity at the surface. In recent sols, we've taken Mastcam images of the same surface ripples on multiple sols. We've been able to see the ripples moving from sol to sol, due to wind moving the sand grains that make up the ripples, which tells us both the dominant wind direction and how strong the wind is. Today's plan included more observations designed to look for changes on the surface and rover deck: a MARDI image of the region below the rover, to prepare for making more images of that location over the next few sols so we can look for changes, and a Navcam deck pan, to look for changes to dust and sand grains on the rover deck. https://phys.org/news/2020-09-curiosity-summer-approaches-gale-crater.html Space Exploration Tue, 01 Sep 2020 07:22:49 EDT news518163765 A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder is pioneering a new solution to the problem of spring cleaning on the moon: Why not zap away the grime using a beam of electrons? https://phys.org/news/2020-08-dustbuster-moon.html Space Exploration Mon, 31 Aug 2020 13:04:04 EDT news518097832 A research group led by Prof. Wang Jian from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) proposed a continuous-scanning near-infrared sky brightness monitor (CNISBM). It can measure 2.5 to 5 μm infrared sky brightness based on an InSb detector and a linear variable filter. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-continuous-scanning-sky-brightness-m.html Astronomy Mon, 31 Aug 2020 12:43:08 EDT news518096585 Radio astronomers have detected jets of hot gas blasted out by a black hole in the galaxy at the heart of the Phoenix Galaxy Cluster, located 5.9 billion light-years away in the constellation Phoenix. This is an important result for understanding the coevolution of galaxies, gas, and black holes in galaxy clusters. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-black-hole-cold-heart-phoenix.html Astronomy Mon, 31 Aug 2020 09:32:47 EDT news518085164 An active galactic nucleus (AGN) is a supermassive black hole residing at the core of a galaxy that is accreting material. The accretion occurs in the vicinity of the hot torus around the nucleus, and it can generate rapidly moving jets of charged particles that emit bright, variable radiation as material ccelertes as it falls inward. Quasars are perhaps the best-known luminous AGN, and their nuclei are relatively unobscured by dust. Quasar nuclear regions and disks are too far away and much too small to be resolved with telescopes and astronomers trying to understand the behavior of quasars, AGN, and accretion disks are forced to infer the physics from indirect measurements. Flux variability measurements offer one such avenue. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-microlensing-quasar-accretion-disk.html Astronomy Mon, 31 Aug 2020 09:23:55 EDT news518084630 NASA has selected five proposals for concept studies of missions to help improve understanding of the dynamics of the sun and the constantly changing space environment with which it interacts around Earth. The information will improve understanding about the universe as well as offer key information to help protect astronauts, satellites, and communications signals—such as GPS—in space. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-nasa-space-environment-missions.html Space Exploration Mon, 31 Aug 2020 09:21:19 EDT news518084476 Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers from Japan have probed a nearby starburst galaxy known as NGC 1482. They detected a molecular gas outflow that could be essential to improving the understanding of the galactic wind in NGC 1482. The finding is detailed in a paper published August 20 on arXiv.org. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-molecular-outflow-galaxy-ngc.html Astronomy Mon, 31 Aug 2020 09:00:01 EDT news518078266 While appearing as a delicate and light veil draped across the sky, this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope actually depicts a small section of the Cygnus supernova blast wave, located around 2,400 light-years away. The name of the supernova remnant comes from its position in the northern constellation of Cygnus (the Swan), where it covers an area 36 times larger than the full moon. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-image-hubble-views-edge-stellar.html Astronomy Mon, 31 Aug 2020 07:39:14 EDT news518078352 Solar filaments are large magnetic structures confining cool and dense plasma suspended in the hot and tenuous corona. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-scientists-reveal-physical-scenario-sympathetic.html Astronomy Mon, 31 Aug 2020 07:39:06 EDT news518078344 NASA has approved the final development stage of the Southwest Research Institute-led Lucy mission to explore the Trojan asteroids in preparation for its October 2021 launch. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-first-ever-mission-trojan-asteroids-nasa.html Space Exploration Fri, 28 Aug 2020 14:29:37 EDT news517843759 On the afternoon of February 10, 2009, the operational communications satellite Iridium 33 collided with the obsolete Cosmos 2251 communications satellite over Siberia at an altitude of roughly 800 kilometers. The collision was at a speed of 11.7 kilometers a second and produced a cloud of more than 2,000 pieces of debris larger than ten centimeters. This debris spread out over an extensive area within a few months and has been threatening to collide with other operational satellites since then. This event was a wake-up call for all satellite operators, but also for politicians. "The problem of so-called space debris—disused artificial objects in space—took on a new dimension," says Professor Thomas Schildknecht, head of the Zimmerwald Observatory and deputy director of the Astronomical Institute at the University of Bern. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-space-debris-day.html Astronomy Space Exploration Fri, 28 Aug 2020 08:54:05 EDT news517823640 One kilowatt is about what it takes to heat up some leftovers in a microwave—or to power the largest and most technically advanced telescope ever built. Thanks to its solar array, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope will stay energy-efficient more than 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth. https://phys.org/news/2020-08-nasa-webb-solar-array-reconnects.html Astronomy Fri, 28 Aug 2020 07:50:02 EDT news517819378