The universe is awash in gravitational waves. The collisions of massive objects such as black holes and neutron stars generate many of them. Now astronomers are wondering about the environments where these catastrophic events occur. It turns out they might need to look at quasars.
Space News & Blog Articles
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A Black Hole Switched On in the Blink of an Eye
In 2019, a team of astronomers led by Dr. Samantha Oates of the University of Birmingham discovered one of the most powerful transients ever seen – where astronomical objects change their brightness over a short period. Oates and her colleagues found this object, known as J221951-484240 (or J221951), using the Ultra-Violet and Optical Telescope (UVOT) on NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory while searching for the source of a gravitational wave (GW) that was thought to be caused by two massive objects merging in our galaxy.
Good news for the alien life hunt: Buried oceans may be common on icy exoplanets
Finding liquid water on exoplanets is 100 times more probable than previously thought, boosting the odds of alien life significantly, a new study suggests.
Ancient Stars Somehow Survived Close to the Center of the Milky Way
The core of our Milky Way Galaxy draws astronomers’ attention like moths to a flame. That’s because there’s a lot going on there. Not only is there a supermassive black hole, but also populations of very ancient stars that swarm the center. Most of them date back at least to the formation of the Galaxy.
New ExoMars lander contract will be issued in a few months
The European Space Agency's director general, Josef Aschbacher, says the member states are moving ahead with a lander design contract to bring a life-seeking rover to Mars.
James Webb Space Telescope time travels billions of years in amazing 3D visualization (video)
A new 3D journey from the James Webb Space Telescope through over 5,000 galaxies demonstrates a 13.4 billion-year journey back in time.
Sloan Great Wall
The Sloan Great Wall, also known as the Great Wall, is a massive cosmic structure discovered in the early 2000s. It is a supercluster of galaxies and is considered one of the largest known structures in the universe. Here are some key details about the Sloan Great Wall:
Colliding black holes could hide in the light of superbright quasars
Only an extreme environment could hide the collision of two stellar-mass black holes — and feeding supermassive black holes could provide such cover.
The 1st light to flood the universe can help unravel the history of the cosmos. Here's how
Just as Darwin used the fossil record to piece together the evolution of life on Earth, scientists can use a "cosmic fossil," the universe's first light, to understand how the cosmos evolved.
Unintended Satellite Emission May Harm Radio Astronomy
Satellites’ leakage radiation, now detected for the first time, may become a major problem for radio astronomy, as “megaconstellations” keep on growing.
A Neutron Star is Unwinding a Companion Star
Close binary stars play several important roles in astronomy. For example, Type Ia supernovae, used to measure galactic distances, occur when a neutron star in a binary system reaches critical mass. These stars are also the source of x-ray binaries and microquasars, which help astronomers understand supermassive black holes and active galactic nuclei. But the evolutionary process of close binaries is still not entirely understood. That’s changing thanks in part to a new discovery of a close binary in its intermediate stage.
Save $500 on Prime Day's lowest-ever Canon EOS R5 camera deal
We rated this camera extremely highly in our review and named it one of the best cameras — and now the price has dropped by $500 for Amazon Prime Day!
Forget Prime Day — the Canon EOS R6 is $300 off at Adorama
Save $300 on this full-frame mirrorless bundle from Canon and get an EOS R6 and an EF-EOS R Ring Mount Adapter to use all your old lenses to shoot the stars.
Chandrayaan-3: A guide to India's third mission to the moon
Chandrayaan-3 is the third Indian mission to the moon. It aims to deploy a lander and a rover to the lunar surface for 14 Earth days to gather science and imagery.
Boom! Watch an inflatable space habitat explode during testing (video)
Lockheed Martin recently completed a successful burst test of the company's sub-scale inflatable space habitat, pushing past safety limits to explode the module at the company's Colorado facility.
Guiding Aeolus' safe reentry
After exceeding its planned life in orbit, ESA’s Aeolus wind satellite is on its way back to Earth. The satellite is currently falling around 1 km a day, and its descent is accelerating. ESA’s spacecraft operators will soon intervene and attempt to guide Aeolus in a first-of-its-kind assisted reentry. Why is ESA doing this?
James Webb Space Telescope spots violent collision between neutron stars
The James Webb Space Telescope traced the second-brightest gamma-ray burst ever seen to a kilonova, a collision between two neutron stars — an event believed to forge heavy elements like gold.
Train me to the Moon and back
Two European astronauts are following the traces of a treasure trove of rare, Moon-like crystals in a Norwegian fjord as part of the PANGAEA geology training course.
Space for travellers
As the 2023 summer holiday season gets under way, ESA and Amsterdam’s international airport are once again giving travellers a chance to discover some out-of-this-world destinations.
See the Red Planet Mars shine beside the blue star Regulus tonight
Look to the western skies on Monday evening (July 10) to see the Red Planet, Mars, shining steadily above the twinkling blueish star Regulus.
Is the puzzling star Betelgeuse going to explode in our lifetime after all?
A new unpublished study is making waves on the internet, claiming that one of the brightest stars in the night sky might die in a spectacular explosion within our lifetime.
