The highly competitive NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP) has named 24 new fellows to its 2024 roster. These young scientists will begin their programs in the fall of 2024 at a university or research center of their choosing in the United States.
Astronomers have discovered the secrets of a starburst galaxy producing new stars at a rate much faster than our Milk Way. This research revealed many different molecules, more than ever seen before in a galaxy like this.
Experts from Florida Atlantic University’s Charles E. Schmidt College of Science are available to discuss various aspects related to the upcoming solar eclipse.
ULLYSES, the largest Hubble program ever, collected information about almost 500 young stars over a three-year period. It aims to help researchers gain new insights about the stars’ formation, evolution, and impact on their surroundings.
It’s a celestial anomaly that happens only once in a blue moon. A Penn State Health expert talks about the safest ways for you to witness the solar eclipse on Monday, April 8.
Astrophysicists at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and University of California, Berkeley, used the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility’s Summit supercomputer to compare models of X-ray bursts in 2D and 3D.
A new image from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration— which includes scientists from the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA)— has uncovered strong and organized magnetic fields spiraling from the edge of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*). Seen in polarized light for the first time, this new view of the monster lurking at the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy has revealed a magnetic field structure strikingly similar to that of the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy, suggesting that strong magnetic fields may be common to all black holes. This similarity also hints toward a hidden jet in Sgr A*.
As you gaze into the night sky, stars look like tiny, glowing pinpricks shining through the dark. But inside those stars, reactions occur that produce staggering amounts of energy. All stars – including our sun – produce energy through a powerful reaction called fusion.
A Hubble telescope survey has found that brown dwarfs—objects smaller than stars but bigger than planets—live a lonely life as they age. Over time they lose the companion brown dwarf that was born alongside them and the objects drift their separate ways.
When a star goes supernova, a massive burst of neutrinos is the first signal that can escape the density of the collapsing star. Detecting and analyzing this phenomenon in real time would allow us insight into stellar dynamics and, potentially, black hole formation.
Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis are developing a prototype for an instrument for a future Moon mission with support from a nearly $3 million grant from NASA.
The giant planet Jupiter, in all its banded glory, is revisited by Hubble in images taken Jan. 5-6, 2024, capturing both sides of the planet. The many large storms and small white clouds are a hallmark of activity in Jupiter's atmosphere.
Space travel and zero gravity can take a toll on the body. A new study has found that astronauts with no prior history of headaches may experience migraine and tension-type headaches during long-haul space flight, which includes more than 10 days in space. The study was published in the March 13, 2024, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Physicists often turn to the Rayleigh-Taylor instability to explain why fluid structures form in plasmas, but that may not be the full story when it comes to the ring of hydrogen clumps around supernova 1987A, research from the University of Michigan suggests.
A new Webb study of two protostars, so young that they have not yet formed planets, has found a variety of molecules ranging from relatively simple ones like methane to complex compounds like acetic acid (familiar to cooks as an ingredient in vinegar). These molecules constitute key ingredients for worlds that might one day host life.
On April 8, 2024, 40 million people across the United States, Canada, and Mexico will have the opportunity to experience a true celestial spectacle, a rare total solar eclipse as the moon passes between the sun and the Earth, blocking daylight for several minutes.
Con la poderosa Cámara de Energía Oscura (DECam por sus siglas en inglés) de 570 megapíxeles, fabricada por el Departamento de Energía de Estados Unidos, los astrónomos han construido una imagen gigante de 1,3 gigapíxeles que muestra la parte central del remanente de Supernova Vela, un cadáver cósmico de una gigantesca estrella que explotó como una supernova. DECam es uno de los instrumentos de imágenes de campo amplio más productivos del mundo y está montada en el Telescopio de 4 metros Víctor M. Blanco de la Fundación Nacional de Ciencias de EE.UU en el Observatorio Interamericano Cerro Tololo en Chile, un Programa de NOIRLab de NSF.
Con la poderosa Cámara de Energía Oscura (DECam por sus siglas en inglés) de 570 megapíxeles, fabricada por el Departamento de Energía de Estados Unidos, los astrónomos han construido una imagen gigante de 1,3 gigapíxeles que muestra la parte central del remanente de Supernova Vela, un cadáver cósmico de una gigantesca estrella que explotó como una supernova. DECam es uno de los instrumentos de imágenes de campo amplio más productivos del mundo y está montada en el Telescopio de 4 metros Víctor M. Blanco de la Fundación Nacional de Ciencias de EE.UU en el Observatorio Interamericano Cerro Tololo en Chile, un Programa de NOIRLab de NSF.
With the powerful, 570-megapixel Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera (DECam), astronomers have constructed a massive 1.3-gigapixel image showcasing the central part of the Vela Supernova Remnant, the cosmic corpse of a gigantic star that exploded as a supernova.
With the powerful, 570-megapixel Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera (DECam), astronomers have constructed a massive 1.3-gigapixel image showcasing the central part of the Vela Supernova Remnant, the cosmic corpse of a gigantic star that exploded as a supernova.
For telescopes operating in the vacuum of space, or optical equipment in extreme environments, existing coatings are often insufficient. In the Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology Aresearchers in China turned to atomic layer deposition and developed an ultrablack thin-film coating for aerospace-grade magnesium alloys. The team used alternating layers of aluminum-doped titanium carbide and silicon nitride and together the materials prevent nearly all light from reflecting off the coated surface. The coating absorbs 99.3% of light while being durable enough to survive in harsh conditions.
In the astronomy field, the term “nearby” is quite relative. Neighboring galaxies to our home galaxy, the Milky Way, are a few million light-years away. In contrast, some of the most distant galaxies ever detected, closer to the Big Bang, are billions of light-years away.
Space Telescope Live provides an interactive way to explore the most accurate, up-to-date, publicly available information on current, past, and upcoming observations by NASA’s Hubble and Webb space telescopes.
The Universe is almost inconceivably vast. So is the amount of data astronomers collect when they study it. This is a challenging process for the scientists and engineers at the U.S. National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). But what if they could do it over 300 times faster?
Hertz Fellow Katelin Schutz thinks existing experimental data across many fields of physics and cosmology can be re-analyzed through a “dark matter lens.”
Since 2019, a team of NASA scientists and their partners have been using NASA’s FUN3D software on supercomputers located at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, or OLCF, to conduct computational fluid dynamics, or CFD, simulations of a human-scale Mars lander. The team’s ongoing research project is a first step in determining how to safely land a vehicle with humans onboard onto the surface of Mars.
Using archival data from the Gemini North telescope, a team of astronomers have measured the heaviest pair of supermassive black holes ever found. The merging of two supermassive black holes is a phenomenon that has long been predicted, though never observed. This massive pair gives clues as to why such an event seems so unlikely in the Universe.
Using archival data from the Gemini North telescope, a team of astronomers have measured the heaviest pair of supermassive black holes ever found. The merging of two supermassive black holes is a phenomenon that has long been predicted, though never observed. This massive pair gives clues as to why such an event seems so unlikely in the Universe.
Usando datos de archivo del telescopio Gemini Norte, un equipo de astrónomos midió un par de agujero negros supermasivos, los más pesados jamás encontrados. La fusión de estos agujeros negros supermasivos es un fenómeno que se predice desde hace mucho tiempo, aunque nunca se ha observado. Este par masivo nos entrega pistas de por qué un evento como este es tan improbable en el Universo.
Usando datos de archivo del telescopio Gemini Norte, un equipo de astrónomos midió un par de agujero negros supermasivos, los más pesados jamás encontrados. La fusión de estos agujeros negros supermasivos es un fenómeno que se predice desde hace mucho tiempo, aunque nunca se ha observado. Este par masivo nos entrega pistas de por qué un evento como este es tan improbable en el Universo.
The recent spike of activity from the sun occurred during what NASA has dubbed the Heliophysics Big Year—a celebration of solar science centered on the April 8 total eclipse, the last that will be visible from the continental U.S. for 20 years.
Most sighting reports of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena occur in the American West where proximity to public lands, dark skies and military installations afford more opportunities to see strange objects in the air. Understanding environmental context may help identify truly anomalous objects that are a legitimate threat.
A new computer platform called TCL 3.0 represents a breakthrough in how scientists measure and monitor changes in tiger habitat and provides a framework for monitoring other wildlife species across the globe.
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory are working on ways to improve thrusters for satellites operating in very low orbit around the Earth. The researchers believe they can make satellites that weigh less, last longer and cost less by creating thrusters that use the air around them instead of having to carry its own supply of fuel. PPPL’s diagnostics will be used to evaluate this innovative thruster concept and characterize key physical processes involved in its operation.
Dark matter comprises over 80% of all matter in the cosmos but is invisible to conventional observation, because it seemingly does not interact with light or electromagnetic fields. Now Dr. Sukanya Chakrabarti, the Pei-Ling Chan Endowed Chair in the College of Science at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), along with lead author Dr. Tom Donlon, a UAH postdoctoral associate, have written a paper to help illuminate just how much dark matter there is in our galaxy and where it resides by studying the gravitational acceleration of binary pulsars. Chakrabarti gave a plenary talk on this work and other methods to measure galactic accelerations at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans in January.