A couple of weeks ago, using the Subaru Telescope, astronomers from the Carnegie Institution for Science discovered the newest dwarf planet of our solar system, which may end up claiming the title for most distant dwarf planet. The object, which isn’t even confirmed as a dwarf planet yet, is called V774104. It resides a distance of 2-3 times that of Pluto, around 9 Billion Km. It is expected to be a little less than half of Pluto’s size, and it may have a highly eccentric orbit, bringing it closer to the Sun over it’s multi-century trip around the solar system. “That’s...
A few hundred million years after the big bang, the first stars formed. We aren’t exactly sure how, but we do know that they contained Hydrogen, Helium, and a little bit of Lithium. These were the only elements in the entire universe at the time. Within these first stars, the fusion of heavier elements began. Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon, Iron, and all the other elements that make up everything we know formed Billions of years ago in these first stars and in their progenitors. It was a slow process to produce these elements and seed them throughout the cosmos, but over...
The Earth, along with the rest of the solar system, was born around 4.6 Billion years ago. At that time, Earth was part of the early group of habitable planets to form in the Universe. According to a new theoretical study from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), the vast majority of Earth-like planets has yet to form. Using data from the Hubble space Telescope (HST) and the Kepler Space Telescope (KST), astronomers were able to come up with a theoretical model of cosmic evolution, detailing how planets will form over the entire lifespan of the Universe. “Our main motivation was...
With the historic fly-by of Pluto last month, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft gave us an up-close look at the former 9th planet, showing that it is a dynamic world with icy plains, tall mountains, and an atmosphere. But now that New Horizons has passed by Pluto, it has the infinite cosmic horizon in its stead. So what’s next for the $700 Million spacecraft? Its battery will keep it going for a few more decades, and it will likely pass beyond the edge of the solar system, in the stead of the Voyager crafts. What else is ahead? The good news is...
I am always fascinated by the diversity of colours, shapes, and scenarios that pop up throughout our universe. Even though we can classify things into categories like ‘planetary nebula,’ ‘galaxy,’ ‘dwarf star,’ and such, there is still a huge amount of variability among these categories. The most diverse group may be nebulae, since their shape relies on what elements are present, the environment in which they formed, and how far along they are in their evolution. A great example of a strange and interesting nebula is the PN M2-9, the Twin Jet Nebula. Lying 5,560 light years away, in the...
I was doing my daily check of some astronomy and space news sites to see what was happening today, as I do every morning before I decide what to write about in my daily blog post. I looked at today’s astronomy picture of the day, a gorgeous work of astrophtographic art showing Mt.Rainier and dozens of meteors, all in front of the sharp filaments of gas of the Milky Way. As a newbie in the world of astrophotography, I look at this picture and try to think about how it was done. Did he take a foreground shot to get...
Astronomers save up some of their best science for conferences. When all of their friends and colleagues get together it can be a big opportunity to show off and impress the titans of the field. This is why big astronomy meetings generate a lot of science news. This is the third or fourth story I’ve posted about the proceedings at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National meeting this week, and the good science just keeps coming in. Although I had strong opinions about a declaration of potential life on Comet 67P earlier this week, a story from the same meeting, I...
Stars are far apart, especially compared to the everyday distances in human experience. The fastest a human being has ever travelled is just shy of 40 Km/s, and even at that incredible speed it would take 30,000 years to reach the closest star. That is an incredible distance no matter how you slice it. Taking it a step further, most stars in the sky are 20-200 times further away, and that’s just the population of stars we can see. So if we go beyond and talk about galaxies and the distances between them, we are literally talking astronomical quantities. Yet even with...
Even I was blown away when I saw this image a friend sent me. Gravitational lensing is a rare occurrence, and a supernova is a rare occurrence, so to see a supernova in a gravitationally lensed galaxy deep within the universe is exceptional. So exceptional that it was spotted for the first time ever in a Hubble image of the distant universe. That dot in the image is a single supernova in a very distant galaxy, split into four images by the gravitational lensing of the galaxy cluster in front of it. But there is also a secondary lensing effect from...
Mars has water. This statement was in question 15 years ago, but now it’s an accepted idea backed up by proof obtained by the last three Mars rovers. Not only does Mars have water now, but it had significantly more water in the past, as evidenced by the geological features seen throughout the planet. Ancient lake and river beds, water erosion, sedimentary rocks, all things that highlight once wet areas. How much water did Mars have? Where did it all go? A team of astronomers from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland has been searching for answers, by looking...
