Universe Today

NASA has selected a concept study, led by physicist Paul Stankus, exploring whether a pair of spacecraft flying in tight formation could one day produce an actual image of an Earth like exoplanet's surface, oceans, continents and all. It's an early stage idea, backed by NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program, but if it ever came together, it would represent an extraordinary leap beyond simply detecting a distant world to genuinely seeing its face.

A team of researchers have found a surprisingly simple way to boost the sensitivity of gravitational wave detectors like LIGO. It’s surprisingly simple to, just point an ordinary thermal imaging camera at the mirrors themselves. The technique could improve LIGO's next upgrade by up to 31%, letting it detect neutron star collisions tens of millions of light years farther away, and is already being built into the design of its planned successor, Cosmic Explorer.

A new study presented at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting suggests that solar storms may warm the Martian lower atmosphere, but only when they strike during a major Martian dust storm. The discovery was accidental, emerging from a search for a different effect entirely, and hints that the weather system on Mars may be more tangled and interconnected than scientists previously assumed.

Confirming the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence via radio signals, also called technosignatures, is the cornerstone of radio astronomy. While humanity has been asking since time immemorial whether or not we’re alone in the universe, radio astronomers are at the frontlines trying to tirelessly answer this longstanding question. To accomplish this, they’ve traditionally focused on a specific radio frequency band called the “water hole”, which resides between 1.42 and 1.66 GHz. This is due to two water-forming molecules, hydrogen and hydroxyl, emitting these frequencies.

When astronomers talk about directly imaging an exoplanet that is orbiting a far away star, the analogy they most commonly go with is trying to spot a fireflight next to a massive search light. An Earth-like exoplanet is incredibly dim - usually between 100 million and 10 billion times fainter than its host star. Understandably, that makes them very difficult to see. But a new paper from Hyunsoo Choi of Hanyang University in South Korea and his co-authors, which is available in pre-print on arXiv, describes a theoretical solution - use a mix of smart computer algorithms and quantum physics.

Geostationary orbit (GEO) is arguably one of the most important orbital spaces we have. So it's critical that we keep it clear of debris that could destroy the valuable GPS, weather tracking, and communications satellites already in this orbit. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done; small pieces of debris at that altitude can slip past even our most sensitive sensors. But now, a new paper published in the Journal of Astronautical Sciences by James Blake and an international collaboration of researchers showcases how an advanced algorithm can help find tiny pieces of debris that would otherwise be missed by traditional surveys.

A strong foundation is key for any building construction, and this doesn’t just apply to construction on Earth. As humanity slowly expands throughout the many worlds of our solar system, and possibly beyond, understanding the planetary surfaces is key to constructing long-lasting habitats beyond Earth. Thus, it’s only natural this venture begins with our own Moon, which is the target of a permanent lunar south pole base by NASA. While the Moon is covered by a thin layer of dust, also called regolith, it’s vital for engineers to know the thickness of this regolith to know the safest locations to construct future lunar habitats and buildings.

Every year, thousands and thousands of satellites get launched into orbit around our planet. The result is an increasingly congested "space" above Earth populated by equipment that provides services to the surface. At the same time, these satellites affect ground-based astronomy research and create potential for damage when they eventually fall through Earth's atmosphere to the ground. In addition, near-Earth space hosts old rocket bodies and other materials left in space by past missions.

A new study from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) addresses the threat of debris in cislunar space, which could pose threats for future missions bound for the Moon.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory has completed a new survey with the updated Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico. It's called the VLASS, the Very Large Array Sky Survey, and it's the most detailed radio survey of the sky ever completed. The VLA used the power of its 28 movable dishes to complete the survey.

Planetary debris disks around white dwarfs appear to be more plentiful than thought. That's because some white dwarfs are magnetic, and those magnetic fields create patches of metallic debris near the stars' poles, where it's more difficult to detect. This leads to an underestimation of debris, something new research is trying to correct.

Astronomers want to know how universal the initial mass fraction (IMF) of galaxies is. To do they that, they need to discern binary stars in other galaxies, a difficult task. Researchers used the JWST to study the Small Magellanic Cloud and determine how many binary stars are there, since they can confuse measurements of the IMF.

Sometimes, you have embark on a journey to appreciate home. The Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) mission recently gave us just such a view of our homeworld and our large natural satellite, as seen from the spacecrafts’ temporary orbit around the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point.

What happens when a black hole and a star meet in the middle of nowhere in a galaxy? It sounds like it could be a dramatic science fiction backdrop, with some hapless starship caught in the crunch. Actually, such encounters in real life are pretty rare. They happen maybe once every 100,000 years. But, when they do occur, the immense gravity of the supermassive black hole tears the star apart. It's an eerie-looking process. The star gets "spaghettified" — that is, pulled on one side by the black hole. That rips out a stream of gas from the star which eventually forms a disk around the black hole.

Based on a new analysis of the Chang'e-6 lunar samples, scientists are again questioning the timing and intensity of the Late Heavy Bombardment period.

The search for extrasolar rocky planets circling other stars is more than mere science. It offers researchers a chance to gain crucial insight into how our own planet functions.

In recent years, the idea that galaxy mergers are responsible for quenching galaxies has grown in importance. This paradigm says that galaxies merge, their black holes form a powerful quasar, and that quasar stifles star formation. But new results from the IllustrisTNG simulations shows that this paradigm may not be accurate.

Little Red Dots are among the most intriguing discoveries made to date by the infrared-sensitive James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). They are distant, small objects that appear red in the JWST observations and they've only been known since 2024. More than 300 of them have been found as part of JWST's infrared surveys of the early Universe.

Where will you be on August 12th? Many an eclipse chaser and the ‘eclipse curious’ will make the journey to stand in the Moon’s shadow on that fast-approaching Wednesday date. This unique eclipse sees the pencil-thin shadow of our Moon curl around the Earth’s pole, before arcing across Greenland, Iceland and the Iberian peninsula towards a dramatic sunset over the western Mediterranean.

Long before a human ever sets foot on the Red Planet, we already know how hard the environment is. Once one finally does, the only things protecting them from that harsh environment will be the infrastructure we’ve built up there, and the spacesuit that keeps that in a protective bubble. Unfortunately, modern space suits aren’t built with Martian gravity, which is 3/8ths of Earth’s, in mind. To prove that point, a team of NASA and industry engineers made a presentation at the 55th International Conference on Environmental Systems (ICES) that showed that the newest generation of spacesuits are simply too heavy to use on Mars.