A few years ago, in a desert in Morocco, a very special meteorite was found. A rock unlike anything ever found on Earth, called NWA 7034, or colloquially ‘black beauty.’ Chemical analysis in 2011 found that it originated on Mars, but it was even unlike any other Martian meteorite discovered. The scientific community was extremely excited to determine its properties through a spectroscopic analysis, and today we have some answers that are as amazing as we expected. A new paper detailing spectroscopic results of the meteorite reveal that its composition is the same as the composition of the dark Martian...
Enjoy this great little video about an asteroid hit as viewed by a dinosaur on ancient Earth. The one in the video is 10Km wide and it’s the size of the one that killed the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous-Paleogene period 66 Million Years ago. For reference, the Asteroid BL86 that passed by us this week was 300Km wide, a true killer! Sadly there’s no explosion, but hey, if we were able to see it we would be instantly vapourized so we wouldn’t be watching it anyway.
This Galaxy, NGC 7714, has an odd shape. In fact we call it a ‘Peculiar Galaxy.’ Why doesn’t it have the characteristic spiral arms if it is indeed a spiral? Why doesn’t it look more diffuse and football shaped like an elliptical galaxy? The reason is that like millions of other galaxies in the Universe, it has recently collided with a nearby companion galaxy. Now using the term ‘collided’ is not really accurate. In reality the two galaxies are interacting via gravity. During a ‘collision,’ stars in the interacting galaxies don’t physically hit each other. The galaxies are incredibly large,...
Cassiopeia A is the expanding remainder of a massive star that exploded 340 years ago in he constellation of Cassiopeia (hence we call it Cas A for short). As the star erupted, hot radioactive material was shot out in all directions, churning up the surrounding outer debris, before the star finally tore itself apart. Simulations of supernova explosions have found it difficult to model the extreme conditions during this process, even when using the world’s best supercomputers. So what are astronomers missing? By studying recent supernovae like Cas A, astronomers can study the processes that formed these massive expanding shock waves, leading...
The best ever image of a Cometary Globule has been released by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the Atacama desert in Chile. It looks a lot like a nebula right? In actuality a cometary globule is a very specific type of nebula. It’s very faint, and it’s formation is a matter of debate among the astronomical community. A cometary globule is small, containing the mass of a few suns worth of material. Compare this to a typical nebula, which has enough material to form thousands or even hundreds of thousands of stars. The...
There has been a lot of planetary news lately, in our own solar system and beyond. With the DAWN spacecraft approaching Ceres, New Horizons finally reaching Pluto in a few months, and the Kepler Space Telescope giving results from it’s new observing run. Not to mention comet Lovejoy, Mars Rover anniversary, and the Venus Metal Frost story. Normally I would pass on so much planetary news, even though it is one of my favourite areas of Astronomy. This story, however, is just too good to pass up. Kepler 444, a very ancient star 117 light years from Earth, about 25% smaller than...
Move over Saturn, J1407b has rings that are far more spectacular than anyone would have imagined. This distant ‘planet’ (It may not actually be a planet) orbits an orange star 117 light-years away in the constellation Centaurus, and has a ring system consisting of 30 separate rings, each of which could be tens of Millions of Kilometres wide. In Spring of 2007, while monitoring the light from the star, astronomers noticed that the star was being eclipsed multiple times to varying degrees. This led the team, consisting of astronomers from Leiden Observatory and the University of Rochester, to conclude that...
Today was the flyby of the big Asteroid 2004 BL86. It can be seen tonight in the sky but you will need a darn good pair of binoculars or a telescope. Here’s where to find it: Scientists have also revealed some new information about it, including updating its size from 550m down to a more paltry 300m, which is still pretty big! Also, it has a moon! Crazy right? Enjoy yet another close shave by a moderately sized Space rock that could have had a devastating impact.
When the temperature is just right, and the sky is clear, you can see some amazing phenomenon from the Sun. It isn’t your eyes playing a trick on you, it just means you’re seeing the right conditions for a really amazing experience. Sun Dogs, known scientifically as Parhelia, typically appear as two bright patches on either side of the Sun. Occasionally they reveal rainbow colours in their pattern, but can be quite bright. They are most easily visible when the Sun is low in the sky. Sun Dogs are made from the refraction of ice crystals in the upper atmosphere....
The Opportunity rover has just about reached it’s 11 year anniversary of it’s 90 day mission puttering around Mars. The actual day is tomorrow since the rover landed on January 25th, 2004. To mark its incredible accomplishment, the imaging team produced a lovely panorama of what the rover would see from its current position on a high point along the rim of endeavour crater. The map below shows the path of Opportunity over its past 11 years, from the Eagle crater, to endurance crater, to Victoria crater, and finally on to the much more massive Endeavour crater, where it currently...
