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Tag: gravity

NASA released this high-resolution enhanced color view of Pluto on 9/25/15. The image combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC) on 7/14/15. (NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI)

Study: Pluto Should Be a Planet!

September 15, 2018

In 2006, members of the International Astronomical Union or the IAU, an organization recognized as the authority for naming celestial bodies, voted on a set of characteristics that define what makes a planet a planet. One of those traits required a planet had to “clear” its orbit; meaning it had to provide the greatest gravitational force in […]

Images of 2015 BZ509 obtained at the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory (LBTO) that established its retrograde co-orbital nature. The bright stars and the asteroid (circled in yellow) appear black and the sky white in this negative image. (C. Veillet/Large Binocular Telescope Observatory)

Asteroid May Have Immigrated From Another Solar System to Ours

May 24, 2018

An odd cigar-shaped object name Oumuamua made news late last year when it was determined to be of interstellar origin. It was touted as the solar system’s first visitor from another star system. A new study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters details the discovery of what scientists are calling the […]

Galaxy cluster MACS J1149.5+223. Highlighted is the position where the star LS1 appeared — its image magnified by a factor 2000 by gravitational microlensing.(NASA, ESA, S. Rodney (John Hopkins University, USA) and the FrontierSN team; T. Treu (University of California Los Angeles, USA), P. Kelly (University of California Berkeley, USA) and the GLASS team; J. Lotz (STScI) and the Frontier Fields team; M. Postman (STScI) and the CLASH team; and Z. Levay (STScI))

Discovered: Most Distant Star Seen (So Far)

April 4, 2018

The 2016 discovery of the most distant star ever seen – so far – has been outlined in a new study published in the journal Nature Astronomy. According to the study, the star, formally named 1) but nicknamed Icarus, is located about 9 billion light-years from Earth. This means light from the star started toward […]

NASA plans to send a spacecraft to within 6.5 million kilometers of the sun's surface next summer. Here’s an artistic rendering of the Parker Solar Probe heading toward the Sun. On May 31, the spacecraft was named to honor astrophysics Eugene Parker who discovered the solar wind in 1958. (Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory).

May 2017 – Science Images

June 1, 2017

A slice through largest-ever three-dimensional map of the Universe. Earth is at the left, and distances to galaxies and quasars are labelled by the lookback time to the objects (lookback time means how long the light from an object has been traveling to reach us here on Earth). The locations of quasars (galaxies with supermassive black holes) are shown by the red dots, and nearer galaxies mapped by SDSS are also shown (yellow). The right-hand edge of the map is the limit of the observable Universe, from which we see the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) – the light “left over” from the Big Bang. The bulk of the empty space in between the quasars and the edge of the observable universe are from the “dark ages”, prior to the formation of most stars, galaxies, or quasars. (Anand Raichoor, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland and the SDSS collaboration)

Astronomers Create Largest 3D Map of the Universe

May 24, 2017

A team of astronomers working with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) created the largest ever three-dimensional map of the universe. Released along with an accompanying study, the astronomers say the new map is the first to exclusively use the positions of quasars to chart the significant structures of the Universe. “Because quasars are so […]

Delta 2nd Stage Stainless Steel Cylindrical Propellant Tank; landed in Georgetown, TX (Photo: NASA Orbital Debris Program Office)

Space Junk Jeopardizes Earth’s Space Environment

April 24, 2017

Scientists estimate that there are some 750,000 pieces of space junk circling Earth, millions more if you count fragments smaller than 1 centimeter. Think about it: Mankind has sent thousands of rockets into space since the launch of the first satellite, Sputnik 1, in 1957. While a number of space vehicles are still in active […]

Artist’s impression of a galaxy forming stars within powerful outflows of material blasted out from supermassive black holes at its core. (ESO/M. Kornmesser)

Astronomers Find Newborn Stars Near Supermassive Black Hole

March 27, 2017

A star being consumed by a black hole may seem quite common.  But, news of stars being formed alongside a black hole could be something to notice! But that’s just what a UK-led group of astronomers say they recently discovered. While they were studying the ongoing collision of two galaxies, known jointly as IRAS F23128-5919, […]

Artist impression shows several comets speeding across a vast protoplanetary disc of gas and dust and heading straight for the youthful, central star HD 172555. (NASA, ESA, and A. Feild and G. Bacon (STScI))

Ants Goof Off Too; Milky Way Steals Stars; Astronomers Spot Exocomets

January 16, 2017

Ants Balance Work and Rest to Maintain Colony Ants have a reputation of being dedicated and hardworking creatures. But did you know that like humans, ants also seek to maintain a healthy balance of work and rest? While an ant colony appears to be filled with busy workers, according to new research, there are also […]

Did our Sun Snatch Planet 9 from Another Solar System?

June 3, 2016

Is it possible that the new-found theoretical Planet 9 is actually an exoplanet, a planet from another solar system? According to astronomers at Sweden’s Lund University, it’s “highly likely” that Planet 9 was actually “snatched” from another solar system by our young sun some 4.5 billion years ago, or within 100 million years after its formation. […]

Scientists Find Traces of Early Earth in Volcanic Rock

May 13, 2016

According to most scientists, Earth was formed between 4.5 and 4.6 billion years ago after gravity forced gas and dust left over from the creation of the Sun accreted into an object called a planetesimal. Over time, the planetesimal continued to gather more and more material and eventually became a planet. Scientists say heat produced […]

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