Welcome to a new series of posts that will characterize 1000 amazing facts about the Universe. There is so much out there that we have yet to learn, and every day, astronomers across the globe are using their research to reveal the deepest secrets of the cosmos. This series will look at the strangest, coolest, most exciting facts that we have discovered in hundreds of years of modern science. Fact #4: Most of the stars in the universe are red dwarfs smaller than our Sun. There is a leap of understanding that happens when a child learns that our Sun...
When you think of a nebula forming stars, it’s hard to imagine how large it is. Most nebulae form hundreds or even thousands of stars before being blown away by the young stellar winds. Pockets of a nebula collapse into dense regions that will eventually become stars with surrounding planetary systems. There are places in the galaxy we can look and actually see it happening. Pictured above, the beautiful ‘running chicken’ nebula, as strangely named as it is, is in the later stages of it’s star forming life. Many bright young stars have formed and their intense radiation is now...
The Crab Nebula, as it’s commonly known, is connected to one of the earliest recorded supernova explosions. In 1054 AD, Chinese Astronomers saw the explosion of this supernova as an incredibly bright star in the sky lasting about two weeks, before fading. Now, nearly 1000 years later, the explosion is still happening as an expanding shock front rich in heavy elements moves through the interstellar medium. When the shock front hits dust or gas it is slowed down, giving the resulting nebula a unique shape. In this case, it looks like a crab. The supernova wasn’t exactly the death of the original...
Black holes are the most extreme phenomena known in the universe. They are the absolute limit of what gravity and space-time can be twisted into. It’s no surprise that some of the most massive and advanced telescopes in the world are tasked with studying their properties and how they interact with their environment. But maybe there’s a way for you and I to see what a black hole can do, and all we need is a moderate 8 inch telescope and our eyes! Even though black holes generally give off tons of radiation, we need to observe them in the...
In the early universe, there was a huge amount of swirling matter and light that didn’t really have much structure. Compared to today’s much more regular dotting of galaxy clusters and superclusters, the early universe was all over the place. But as will all things, there had to be a first. a first star, a first galaxy, and even a first galaxy cluster. The massive cluster of galaxies known as IDCS J1426.5+3508 is the most distant massive galaxy cluster ever discovered, and it has some interesting properties that point to how it formed and evolved so quickly. One such property is...
When Isaac Newton quantified gravity, his theory explained how everything in the world around us behaved in its presence. It opened a door to an understanding of something fundamental, yet elusive in explanation. Centuries later, Einstein came along and took a step back, finding a larger more comprehensive theory of gravity, one that explained the strange things that happen in the grand universe. His theory could even explain things that Newton’s theory of gravity could not, such as the odd orbit of Mercury around the Sun. But the greatest part of Einstein’s theory is that if you use it to...
As we rang in the new year, we were treated to a special astronomical appearance of Comet C/2013 US10 Catalina, close to the bright star Arcturus in the image below. Also visible near the top is the faint Comet P/19 Borrelly, and between the two comets is a bright meteor that swept through the scene. It’s remarkable to notice the clearly visible tales of Catalina, the blue ion tail sweeping directly away from the Sun due to solar wind pressure, and the dusty white tail marking the path of the comet. The dust is too heavy to be swept away...
Since the arrival of the Dawn spacecraft in March of 2015, we have seen tremendous views of the dwarf planet Ceres. Lying within the asteroid belt, it is revealed to be a frozen world of ice and rock, with many interesting features. None of these features had generated more intrigue than the famous bright spot in the bottom of what is now called the Occator crater. The icy spot has had astronomers guessing for months whether it is a cryovolcano, water ice, frozen carbon dioxide, or something even more strange and rare. As the Dawn spacecraft has moved into a...
Predicting the death of a star is easy. If we know how massive it is, and what stage of life it’s in, we know that it should explode eventually, within a set timeframe of many hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years. But on human timescales, that is just not good enough. What if we could predict a supernova explosion within a few months? For something that lives for so long, this would be a triumph in our understanding of the universe. Over the past couple of years, this is exactly what happened. Here’s how. A supernova is one of the most...
We are reaching the point in our study of exoplanets, planets orbiting other stars, where the atmospheres of distant worlds are within the limits of our technology. Once we could barely see the wobble of a star, the telltale sign of an exoplanet, and now we can see reflected starlight and study a distant atmosphere. Now we can probe deeper questions, are atmospheres of exoplanets similar to solar system planets? What are they made of? Do other solar systems have the same raw materials as ours? Do they have what we believe to be the raw materials for life? A...
