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☆ Scanning the Dark Universe, Euclid Finds Scenes of Cosmic Light
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-23 | by ( Katrina Miller | More About Katrina Miller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Ninety percent of the mass in this cluster is dark matter. Gravity makes dark matter clump together, but dark energy counteracts this effect. Studying the density of dark matter across the cosmos will help astronomers learn how dark energy influences the structure of our universe. The telescope’s sensors make it like a net for light, Dr. Cuillandre said. “It’s very rare to find an isolated galaxy,” Dr. Cuillandre said.

Persons: Euclid, Katrina Miller Euclid, ” Jean, Charles Cuillandre, Beta, Cuillandre, ”, Michael Seiffert, “, We’re, Seiffert Organizations: European Space Agency, CEA Paris, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Messier

☆ Supernova or Coronavirus: Can You Tell the Difference?
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-21 | by ( Katrina Miller | More About Katrina Miller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Can you tell the difference between microscopic and massive? Red whirls on this rabbit’s tongue are filiform papillae, which roughen the tongue and help move food around the mouth. Purple and white “spike” proteins on this popular model of the coronavirus help it attach to and enter our cells. These might remind you of …… the clumps of cosmic debris in Tycho’s supernova, a star that may have exploded at many points simultaneously. Its concentric rings resemble …… the raging vortex at Saturn’s north pole, where green, pink and blue correspond to clouds of increasing depth.

Persons: Kim Arcand, NASA’s Chandra, … Organizations: Smithsonian Astrophysical

☆ How to Watch China’s Launch to the Far Side of the Moon
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-03 | by ( Katrina Miller | More About Katrina Miller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Why the far side of the moon? But the far side of the moon — it is not actually the dark side of the moon — is distinct from the near side. With a lunar far side sample, scientists can begin to probe why the two sides of the moon are so different. Because the same side of the moon always faces Earth, it is impossible to directly establish communications with the lunar far side. Chang’e-7, expected to launch in 2026, will search for water at the lunar south pole.

Persons: maria Organizations: Soviet, China National Space Administration Locations: United States, Soviet Union, China, Chang’e

☆ A Star With Six Planets That Orbit Perfectly in Sync
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-29 | by ( Katrina Miller | More About Katrina Miller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Astronomers have discovered six planets orbiting a bright star in perfect resonance. The star system, 100 light-years from Earth, was described on Wednesday in a paper published in the journal Nature. “It’s like looking at a fossil,” said Rafael Luque, an astronomer at the University of Chicago who led the study. “The orbits of the planets today are the same as they were a billion years ago.”Researchers think that when planets first form, their orbits around a star are in sync. That is, the time it takes for one planet to waltz around its host star might be the same amount of time it takes for a second planet to circle exactly twice, or exactly three times.

Persons: ”, Rafael Luque Organizations: University of Chicago

☆ Euclid Telescope Dazzles With Detailed First Images of Our Universe
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-07 | by ( Katrina Miller | More About Katrina Miller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“And it’s those ingredients pulled together that is going to make Euclid the iconic cosmology mission of the day.”Whereas NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope zooms in on one part of the sky at a time, Euclid excels at imaging wide, but still detailed, swaths of the universe. That’s perfect for “when you want to look for a needle in a haystack,” Dr. Seiffert said, including objects like free-floating worlds. With the data Euclid sends home, researchers can learn about how the web of dark matter cementing our universe together influences the shapes and motions of visible objects in space. The telescope’s detailed resolution is also expected to help scientists map the distribution of galaxies across cosmic time, aiding in understanding dark energy, the inexplicable force pulling the universe apart. Over the summer, scientists worked around the clock to fix a faulty navigation sensor that made Euclid create images of winding star trails as the telescope tried to capture a piece of sky.

Persons: Carole Mundell, NASA’s James Webb, Euclid, Seiffert, Mundell Organizations: Space

☆ NASA’s Lucy Mission Set Its Sights on 1 Asteroid. It Found 2.
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-02 | by ( Katrina Miller | More About Katrina Miller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On Wednesday, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft zoomed by its first asteroid target — and scientists on the mission were shocked to discover that the rock, named Dinkinesh, was actually two rocks. The binary consists of a larger, primary asteroid and a smaller “moon” orbiting around it, as seen in images that Lucy captured of the pair. “We knew this was going to be the smallest main belt asteroid ever seen up close,” Keith Noll, an astronomer and Lucy project scientist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a news release. Lucy will visit nine additional space rocks through 2033, part of NASA’s broader effort to glean knowledge about our celestial neighborhood. “The Trojans are the last big population of objects that we have not yet seen close up,” said Thomas Statler, a NASA planetary scientist on the mission.

Persons: NASA’s, Lucy, ” Keith Noll, ”, Thomas Statler Organizations: NASA Goddard Space Flight, Trojans, NASA

☆ How to Watch NASA Bring Asteroid Samples Home From Space
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-24 | by ( Katrina Miller | More About Katrina Miller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On Sunday morning, a brown-and-white capsule will shoot through Earth’s atmosphere to drop off a cache of pristine space rock to a team of eagerly waiting scientists and engineers. If successful, the sample return will be the end of a seven-year mission by NASA called OSIRIS-REX — which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resources Identification and Security-Regolith Explorer — that launched in 2016. When will OSIRIS-REX drop off the sample and how can I watch? NASA will livestream the arrival on its YouTube channel starting around 10 a.m. Earlier on Sunday, the OSIRIS-REX command team conducted what they call a go-or-no-go poll to determine whether the spacecraft would release the capsule.

Organizations: NASA, YouTube Locations: Utah, Salt Lake City

☆ Don’t Miss Comet Nishimura This Weekend, a Once-in-a-Lifetime View
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-08 | by ( Katrina Miller | More About Katrina Miller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Astronomy aficionados are buzzing about a bright new comet. The ball of dust and ice is formally named C/2023 P1, but is also called Comet Nishimura, for Hideo Nishimura, the Japanese photographer who first spotted it. How was the comet discovered? Mr. Nishimura captured the comet on Aug. 12 while imaging the sky before sunrise with a digital camera — the third comet he has discovered. That’s exactly how scientists discovered Comet NEOWISE in 2021, which was named for the NASA space telescope that detected it, the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer.

Persons: Comet Nishimura, Hideo Nishimura, Nishimura, Vishnu Reddy, ” Dr, Reddy, Comet NEOWISE Organizations: Central Bureau, University of Arizona, NASA, Survey

☆ The Blue Supermoon: A Gem in the Night Sky
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-29 | by ( Katrina Miller | More About Katrina Miller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The lunar fanfare of August is wrapping up with a treat: a blue supermoon that will occur on Wednesday at 9:36 p.m. Eastern time. The blue moon is the second of two full moons in a single month. Each month usually hosts only one full moon, but blue moons sometimes arise because the lunar cycle is 29.5 days long — just short of the length of an average calendar month. What is a blue supermoon? A supermoon occurs when the full moon phase of the lunar cycle syncs up with the perigee, or when it is nearest to the Earth.

Organizations: NASA

JAXA, the Japanese space agency, is gearing up to launch two very different space missions from one rocket: a new X-ray telescope that will spy on some of the hottest spots in our universe, and a small experimental robotic moon lander. The telescope is called X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, or XRISM for short (pronounced like the word “chrism”). The lunar mission is called Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM. XRISM and SLIM are expected to launch from an H-IIA rocket from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center on Sunday at 8:26 p.m. Eastern time (it will be Monday at 9:26 a.m. in Japan). JAXA is providing a livestream in both Japanese and English on the agency’s YouTube channel which started around 7:55 p.m. Eastern time.

Persons: Lander, SLIM Organizations: JAXA, Imaging, YouTube Locations: Japan

☆ Ancient Fires Drove Large Mammals Extinct, Study Suggests
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-17 | by ( Katrina Miller | More About Katrina Miller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Dr. Dunn emphasized that this pattern could not account for the notable disappearance of large mammals elsewhere in the world at the end of the last ice age. “But in order to understand the global event, you really need to look at a regional scale,” she said. The researchers noted that it was hard to absorb the similarity of current events to those in the fossil record. “Many of the most threatened wildlife today are the remaining large-bodied mammals that didn’t go extinct” at the end of the last ice age, Dr. Lindsey said. But, she added, “because we caused this, we have the power to stop it.”

Persons: O’Keefe, ”, Dunn, ” Anthony Barnosky, Dr, Barnosky, Lindsey Organizations: University of California Locations: Southern California, Australia, Berkeley

☆ Physicists Move One Step Closer to a Theoretical Showdown
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-10 | by ( Katrina Miller | More About Katrina Miller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

On July 24, a large team of researchers convened in Liverpool to unveil a single number related to the behavior of the muon, a subatomic particle that might open a portal to a new physics of our universe. All eyes were on a computer screen as someone typed in a secret code to release the results. The first number that popped out was met with exasperation: a lot of concerning gasps, oh-my-God’s and what-did-we-do-wrong’s. The new measurement matched exactly what the physicists had computed two years prior — now with twice the precision. “It really all comes down to that single number,” said Hannah Binney, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory who worked on the muon measurement as a graduate student.

Persons: ”, Kevin Pitts, Hannah Binney Organizations: Virginia Tech, Fermi, Accelerator Laboratory, Fermilab, Massachusetts Institute, Technology’s, Laboratory Locations: Liverpool, Batavia, Ill

☆ Our Galaxy Is Home to Trillions of Worlds Gone Rogue
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-06 | by ( Katrina Miller | More About Katrina Miller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

They probably form the same way other planets do: within the swirling disk of gas and dust surrounding an infant star. But unlike their planetary siblings, these worlds get violently chucked out of their celestial neighborhoods. Astronomers had once calculated that billions of planets had gone rogue in the Milky Way. Now, scientists at NASA and Osaka University in Japan are upping the estimate to trillions. The existence of wandering worlds orphaned from their star systems has long been known, but poorly understood.

Persons: — Organizations: NASA, Osaka University Locations: Japan

☆ NASA Reaches Voyager 2 With a Last-Ditch ‘Shout’ Across the Void
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-04 | by ( Katrina Miller | More About Katrina Miller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

It took an interstellar “shout” across the solar system. But NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said on Friday that it re-established full communications with Voyager 2, an aging probe exploring the outer edges of the solar system. “After two weeks of not hearing anything, we’re back to getting unique data from the interstellar medium,” said Linda Spilker, a planetary scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the lead mission scientist for Voyager 2. On Tuesday morning, officials from the Deep Space Network, a worldwide system of radio dishes NASA uses to communicate with various space probes, detected a carrier signal known as a heartbeat from Voyager 2. Nonetheless, being able to pick up only the heartbeat “was upsetting and worrisome,” said Suzanne Dodd, the project manager for Voyager 2.

Persons: ”, Linda Spilker, Suzanne Dodd Organizations: Propulsion Laboratory, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Space, NASA

☆ NASA’s Voyager 2 Is Out of Contact but Not Lost in Space
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-01 | by ( Katrina Miller | More About Katrina Miller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

This isn’t the first time NASA has lost the ability to talk to the spacecraft. In 2020, scientists managing the Deep Space Network shut down the sole radio dish capable of talking to Voyager 2 for repairs and upgrades. A few weeks after Voyager 2 began its journey, NASA launched its twin, Voyager 1, which followed a different trajectory and reached interstellar space first. Earlier this year, Voyager 2 switched to running its five instruments on backup power to prolong the life of the mission. “It’s a 46-year-old spacecraft — we don’t like being out of contact with it,” the spokeswoman said.

Persons: “, It’s Organizations: NASA, Deep Space, Jet Propulsion Laboratory

☆ Move Over, Men: Women Were Hunters, Too
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-01 | by ( Katrina Miller | More About Katrina Miller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The researchers also found that women were more flexible in their approaches to hunting as they aged. Which weapons they chose, the game they chased and who accompanied them during hunts changed with age and the number of children or grandchildren the hunters had. The details about female hunting patterns were not easy to uncover, Ms. Chilczuk said; the reports often prioritized discussions of the male hunters. But the findings, when they emerged, made a certain sense, she added: If hunting was the chief means of survival, why would only men participate? “I always assumed that women did hunt probably more often than was recognized,” she said.

Persons: “, they’re, ”, Scheffler, Chilczuk, Ms, Tammy Buonasera, —, Randy Haas, We’ve Organizations: University of Alaska, Wayne State University Locations: University of Alaska Fairbanks

☆ Titanium Clouds Engulf This Ultrahot Neptune-like Planet
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-27 | by ( Katrina Miller | More About Katrina Miller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Astronomers have come across the shiniest planet ever found, a mere 265 light years from our solar system. Shrouded by thick metallic clouds, this world’s temperature reaches a blistering 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and it quite likely rains scorching-hot drops of titanium. The find, named LTT 9779 b, was described in a paper published this month in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Nearly five times as big as Earth, it’s one of the few ultrahot, gaseous exoplanets of this size that scientists have discovered. But LTT 9779 b, which sprints around its star once every 19 hours, is midsize — making it one of four or five planets in the so-called Neptune desert, and the only one with an intact atmosphere.

Persons: ”, James Jenkins Organizations: Astrophysics, Diego Portales University, NASA’s Locations: Chile

☆ Avi Loeb’s Deep Dive for Alien Life Is Making Other Scientists Gasp
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-24 | by ( Katrina Miller | More About Katrina Miller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Its location, velocity and brightness were recorded by U.S. government sensors and quietly tucked away in a database of similar events. Based on its logged speed and direction, Mr. Siraj identified the fireball as an extreme outlier. Last month, Dr. Loeb led an expedition to retrieve fragments of the fireball off the western Pacific seafloor. And that, he says to the chagrin of many of his colleagues, may be evidence of extraterrestrial life. “Not biological creatures, the way you see in science fiction movies,” Dr. Loeb said.

Persons: Avi Loeb, Amir Siraj, Siraj, Loeb, ” Dr, “, ” Organizations: U.S, Harvard University Locations: Manus Island, Papua New Guinea

☆ A Year of Cosmic Wonder With the James Webb Space Telescope
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-12 | by ( Katrina Miller | More About Katrina Miller | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The awe the image inspires is comparable to how researchers feel about the Webb’s first year of science. She finds it fitting that the customary gift for one-year anniversaries is paper, because that’s exactly what researchers using the telescope have been churning out for the past year: scientific papers. When it was ready, the Webb embarked on its journey to peer into the depths of the universe. For Dr. Rigby, one of the most gratifying accomplishments of this past year is the way the mission has delivered on its promise to reveal the earliest moments of cosmic time. Before JWST, astronomers knew of only a small handful of candidate galaxies that existed in the first billion years after the Big Bang.

Persons: ”, Jane Rigby, Webb, Rigby, JWST Organizations: Goddard Space Flight

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