Tag: Astrophysics
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Webb peers at young star’s dusty disk, discovers an exoplanet, and uncovers star formation
At the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) on Jan. 11, three teams presented research that utilized the capabilities of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The first team used Webb to observe the dusty disk surrounding a young red dwarf star, the second to discover an exoplanet, and the third used the telescope’s…
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Astronomers witness unprecedented corona formation, evolution around black hole
With help from NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescopic Array (NuSTAR) X-ray telescope, a group of researchers recently bore unusually close witness to the formation and evolution of an unexpected corona around a supermassive black hole as it destroyed a star that had passed too close to it. The event, located 250 million light years from Earth,…
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TESS returns from safe mode, the case of the missing exoplanet atmosphere
Following an incident that triggered the telescope to enter safe mode, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has resumed normal science operations in its highly elliptical Earth orbit. TESS entered safe mode on Monday, Oct. 10, and was in the protective states until Thursday, Oct. 13, at approximately 22:30 UTC. Meanwhile, a team of researchers…
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Hubble and VLT discover spiraling structure of young stars, hints at star formation in early universe
In a recently released study, data from the joint NASA/European Space Agency (ESA) Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Observatory’s (ESO) ground-based Very Large Telescope (VLT) has been used to discover young stars spiraling into the center of a star cluster within the Small Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.…
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Data from ESA’s Gaia mission reveals our Sun’s future and past
On June 13, the third major data release from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia mission revealed details about the past and future of our solar system’s star, the Sun, by using data collected by Gaia on stars of similar mass and composition to our Sun. Gaia is a star mapping mission and collects massive…
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NASA, ESA, CSA release historic first images from the James Webb Space Telescope
NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) have released the first set of full-color images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope — the world’s newest, most powerful, and largest space telescope. A total of five images were released, with the first image being unveiled by United States President Joe…
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Researchers use Hubble to observe dead star destroying planetary system
A team of researchers using archival data from the Hubble Space Telescope, a joint venture between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), as well as other NASA observatories have observed a white dwarf consuming and destroying a planetary system — the first time an observation of such kind has been made. The white dwarf, a…
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James Webb targets detailed as commissioning nears completion
Over the past five months, the James Webb Space Telescope and the joint NASA, European Space Agency, and Canadian Space Agency teams behind the project have been working towards the completion of the observatory’s six-month-long commissioning phase at the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 (L2). With the observatory’s mirrors recently completing alignment, Webb and its teams…
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New research directly observes atmospheric loss on mini-Neptune exoplanets, provides insight into exoplanet evolution
In two studies recently released by a group of astronomers researching exoplanets, the first direct observations of atmospheric loss on mini-Neptune exoplanets were confirmed. What’s more, the data from the studies points to the atmospheric loss potentially causing the mini-Neptunes to transform into super-Earth exoplanets — a stunning discovery in exoplanet research. “Most astronomers suspected…
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New research from ESA’s CHEOPS observatory reveals rugby ball shape of strange exoplanet
Exoplanets all over the universe come in different sizes, compositions, colors, and temperatures. However, they typically don’t come in different shapes, as nearly every single planet ever discovered is thought to be spherical in shape — except for one. New data from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Characterising Exoplanets Satellite (CHEOPS) space observatory, as well…