The sixth brightest star in the night sky, Capella, is the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere constellation Auriga the Charioteer. This star is also one of the points in the Winter Hexagon. Source: https://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/capella-is-the-stellar-beacon-of-auriga-the-charioteer…
Tag: the universe
We may have found hints of gravitational waves permeating the universe
When supermassive black holes merge, they create a low thrum of gravitational waves that permeates the universe, and we may have just spotted it for the first time Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2264633-we-may-have-found-hints-of-gravitational-waves-permeating-the-universe/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Most distant quasar discovered sheds light on how black holes grow
A team of astronomers led by the University of Arizona has observed a luminous quasar 13.03 billion light-years from Earth—the most distant quasar discovered to date. Dating back to 670 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was only 5% its current age, the quasar hosts a supermassive black hole equivalent to the combined mass of 1.6 billion suns….
A new look at the universe’s oldest light
New work agrees with older research suggesting the oldest light in the universe – from the most distant galaxy yet known – started its journey toward us 13.77 billion years ago. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/a-new-look-at-the-universes-oldest-light…
Roman Space Telescope could image 100 Hubble ultra deep fields at once
One of the Hubble Space Telescope’s most iconic images is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, which unveiled myriad galaxies across the universe, stretching back to within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang. Hubble peered at a single patch of seemingly empty sky for hundreds of hours beginning in September 2003, and astronomers first unveiled this galaxy tapestry in…
Unveiling the double origin of cosmic dust in the distant Universe
Two billion years after the Big Bang, the Universe was still very young. However, thousands of huge galaxies, rich in stars and dust, were already formed. An international study, led by SISSA—Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati, now explains how this was possible. Scientists combined observational and theoretical methods to identify the physical processes behind their evolution and, for the first…
How will the U.S. space program fare under Joe Biden?
Joe Biden is the United States presidential election winner, but his plans for NASA remain unclear. And while citizens digest the election results, the space industry is left wondering what comes next. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/how-will-the-u-s-space-program-fare-under-joe-biden…
Chinese researchers obtain the most complete type Ia supernova template
Type Ia supernovae, as cosmological distance indicators, have led to the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe. Nevertheless, the nature of their progenitors and explosion mechanisms remain unsolved mysteries. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-01-chinese-ia-supernova-template.html…
A new NASA space telescope, SPHEREx, is moving ahead
NASA’s upcoming space telescope, the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer, or SPHEREx, is one step closer to launch. The mission has officially entered Phase C, in NASA lingo. That means the agency has approved preliminary design plans for the observatory, and work can begin on creating a final, detailed design, as well as…
How every galaxy comes from quantum fluctuations billions of years ago
All the galaxies in the universe started out in a similar way, but the forms they now take are incredibly diverse, writes Chanda Prescod-Weinstein Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933160-200-how-every-galaxy-comes-from-quantum-fluctuations-billions-of-years-ago/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…