Unique Process Formed a Strange Lunar Dome

We tend to think of the Moon as a boring old rock.  “We’ve been there, so we know all there is to know, onto the next one.” But the Moon still holds secrets, and has its surprises.  The formation of the Moon through collision of proto-Earth with a Mars-sized object is an idea that can give us a lot of insight into how the Earth formed and what raw materials we started with.  But of course to study it we have to see what the Moon is made of in addition to what the Earth’s rocks contain. In recent years,...

Ghosts of Quasars Past Surround Distant Galaxies

Have you ever heard of an object called ‘Hanny’s Voorwerp?’  It’s a thin wispy ghost-like blob at the edge of a Galaxy.  It was discovered by Dutch schoolteacher Hanny van Arkel in 2007 as she was classifying galaxies as part of the Galaxy Zoo project.  Since then, astronomers have been studying its origin, as it was the first of a brand new phenomenon in astronomy. This past week, a new data set of wispy trails at the edge of Galaxies have been released as part of a Hubble study by Bill Keel of the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa.  The new Hubble...