Researchers Rewind the Clock to Calculate Age and Site of Supernova Blast

Sometime during the third century, a brilliant burst of light from the explosion of a massive star was visible from Earth. If the supernova blast had flashed over the northern hemisphere, it might have been considered an evil omen. At that time, Western Civilization was in upheaval. The Roman Empire was beginning to crumble. An emperor was assassinated,...

2d

Researchers Rewind the Clock to Calculate Age and Site of Supernova Blast

Sometime during the third century, a brilliant burst of light from the explosion of a massive star was visible from Earth. If the supernova blast had flashed over the northern hemisphere, it might have been considered an evil omen. At that time, Western Civilization was in upheaval. The Roman Empire was beginning to crumble. An emperor was assassinated,...

2d

Researchers Rewind the Clock to Calculate Age and Site of Supernova Blast

Sometime during the third century, a brilliant burst of light from the explosion of a massive star was visible from Earth. If the supernova blast had flashed over the northern hemisphere, it might have been considered an evil omen. At that time, Western Civilization was in upheaval. The Roman Empire was beginning to crumble. An emperor was assassinated,...

3d

New Horizons Spacecraft Answers Question: How Dark Is Space?

How dark is the sky, and what does that tell us about the number of galaxies in the visible universe? Astronomers can estimate the total number of galaxies by counting everything visible in a Hubble deep field and then multiplying them by the total area of the sky. But other galaxies are too faint and distant to directly detect. Yet while we can’t count...

5d

Roman Space Telescope Could Image 100 Hubble Ultra Deep Fields at Once

In 1995, the Hubble Space Telescope stared at a blank patch of the sky for 10 straight days. The resulting Deep Field image captured thousands of previously unseen, distant galaxies. Similar observations have followed since then, including the longest and deepest exposure, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Now, astronomers are looking ahead to the future,...

6d

Dark Storm on Neptune Reverses Direction, Possibly Shedding a Fragment

When NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by Neptune in 1989 after a nearly 3-billion-mile odyssey, astronomers expected to get a close-up look at a blue-green planet that seemed as featureless as a marble. Instead, they were shocked and intrigued to see a dynamic and turbulent world of whirling storms, including a giant feature dubbed the Great Dark Spot,...

3w

Hubble Pins Down Weird Exoplanet with Far-Flung Orbit

Though every planet in our solar system has been visited by spacecraft over nearly the past 60 years, the outer frontier of the solar system, beyond Neptune, has been barely explored. There is circumstantial evidence that a planet five times Earth's mass – dubbed Planet Nine – may be lurking out there in the abyss. If real, it is creeping along a very...

3w

Hubble Captures Unprecedented Fading of Stingray Nebula

Great things take time. This is true when it comes to many processes in the universe. For example, it takes millions of years for stars—the building blocks of the universe—to form. Then, many stars last for billions of years before they die and begin to eject shells of gas that glow against the vastness of space—what we call nebulas. It can be exceedingly...

3w

Hubble Captures Unprecedented Fading of Stingray Nebula

Great things take time. This is true when it comes to many processes in the universe. For example, it takes millions of years for stars—the building blocks of the universe—to form. Then, many stars last for billions of years before they die and begin to eject shells of gas that glow against the vastness of space—what we call nebulas. It can be exceedingly...

3w

Dark Storm on Neptune Reverses Direction, Possibly Shedding a Fragment

When NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by Neptune in 1989 after a nearly 3-billion-mile odyssey, astronomers expected to get a close-up look at a blue-green planet that seemed as featureless as a marble. Instead, they were shocked and intrigued to see a dynamic and turbulent world of whirling storms, including a giant feature dubbed the Great Dark Spot,...

Dec 2020