[ad_1] A team at the Institute for Research on Exoplanets at the Université de Montréal published their findings yesterday. Led by Björn Benneke, their work (which has yet to be peer reviewed) points to the possibility that K2-18 b is habitable thanks to the presence of water and hydrogen, as well as the exoplanet’s location […]
Category: astronomy
NASA selects proposals for smallsats built to study deep space
[ad_1] The two proposals are being funded in $400,000, nine-month concept studies. Whichever proposal wins the day will launch as one of the payloads aboard the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) in October 2024. That might not sound like a lot of money even at such an early stage, but that’s part of the […]
Supercomputer creates millions of virtual universes
[ad_1] The production of roughly 8 million simulated universes took ‘just’ three weeks. The approach is not only helping to understand how galaxies evolve, but is challenging existing theories. To begin with, galaxies may produce stars for considerably longer than previously thought. Star formation should have ended ages ago under existing models, and dark matter […]
Scientists find the largest observed black hole to date
[ad_1] The team spotted the black hole using data from the Very Large Telescope array. The wealth of extra data from the Chile observatory helped them map the structure of Holm 15A in unprecedented detail, helping them run simulations to explain the galaxy’s formation and its unusually faint center. Simply speaking, the black hole is […]
The world’s largest telescope is one step closer to completion
[ad_1] The GMT is an international effort to create a telescope that delivers images 10 times clearer than those produced by the Hubble Space Telescope. When it’s up and running, the GMT will help scientists tackle some of the biggest questions, like are we alone in the universe? It will allow astronomers to collect more […]
Two dead, dancing stars challenge astronomers' expectations
[ad_1] Stars still have plenty of surprises despite (or perhaps, because of) advances in astronomy. Researchers using Caltech's Zwicky Transient Facility have discovered a binary white dwarf system 8,000 light-years away, ZTF J1539+5027, where the two dead… [ad_2] Source link
Astronomers believe the young Milky Way once swallowed a dwarf galaxy
[ad_1] Astronomers previously believed that the galaxy was made of two separate sets of stars, but exactly how or when they came together was a mystery. Using the Gaia space telescope, these researchers were able to take more precise measurements of the position, brightness and distance of roughly one million stars. They also looked at […]
Russia launches X-ray telescope to find ‘millions’ of black holes
[ad_1] Spektr-RG is expected to conduct an exceptionally detailed 6.5-year survey that could discover roughly 100,000 galaxy clusters, hundreds of thousands of active stars and about 3 million supermassive black holes. In addition to providing a more detailed map of the cosmos, it could help understand the formation of black holes, the distribution of matter […]
X-rays help astronomers detect spinning black holes
[ad_1] The team used an in-between galaxy to get clear images of quasars consisting of the black holes, with Chandra offering a sharp-enough image to separate the multiple images that resulted from the lensing effect. From there, microlensing (in this case, magnification using individual stars from the galaxy) helped detect the spin in question. The […]
NASA’s TESS spacecraft discovers its smallest exoplanet to date
[ad_1] TESS spotted the planets by using transits (regular dips in the star’s brightness caused by passing planets). You might get more information soon, at least. TESS completes its first year of studies in July, and that could be enough to both collect more detail about the known planets and possibly spot more. This isn’t […]