Category: Astronomy and Astrophysics

Shelf Life Video: Time Travel to Stars Astronomy and Astrophysics Science Videos 

Shelf Life Video: Time Travel to Stars

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With the help of high school students, scientists at The American Museum of Natural History are creating an online catalog of stars’ distances and relative positions. This video is another in the Shelf Life series from the American Museum of Natural History.   Since the early 17th century, thanks to the use of telescopes, astronomers have been able to draw detailed star maps. However, because the Earth wobbles on its axis, today we see the stars in a slightly different position than in the past. So, students and scientists are…

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Spacecraft Could Clean Up Trash Orbiting Earth Astronomy and Astrophysics 

Spacecraft Could Clean Up Trash Orbiting Earth

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There is a lot of trash orbiting earth. More than 170 million pieces and counting, in fact. The pieces of trash range from tiny bits of metal to entire satellites no longer in use. By Katherine Lindemann Human activity in space has left behind a lot of trash orbiting earth, from tiny bits of metal to entire satellites no longer in use. This debris poses a danger to new and ongoing missions. Inna Sharf is an aeronautical engineer at McGill University and is working on ways to remove it from…

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NASA Astronauts Return from Space Station Astronomy and Astrophysics 

NASA Astronauts Return from Space Station

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NASA astronaut and Expedition 49 crew member Kate Rubins, who became the first person to sequence DNA in space, returned to Earth on Saturday, October 29, after a successful mission aboard the International Space Station. Rubins and her crewmates, Anatoly Ivanishin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos and Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, touched down in their Soyuz MS-01 at 11:58 p.m. EDT (9:58 a.m. October 30, Kazakhstan time) southeast of the remote town of Dzhezkazgan in Kazakhstan. Rubins, who has a degree in molecular biology, contributed to…

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Two Perseid meteors from western NC (Emily Willoughby) Astronomy and Astrophysics 

Discovered: Nearby Planets that Could Host Life

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MIT researchers found three potentially habitable planets orbiting an ultra-cool dwarf star. Three planets, just 40 light years away from Earth, could support life. And we will be able to explore them within the next ten years. The study, released today in Nature, located the planets just 40 light years away from Earth. While scientists continue to explore the potential of life on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, the newly-discovered planets represent the most likely so far to host life outside our solar system. The study’s lead author, Julien de Wit, tells us why the…

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Painting the Way to the Moon Astronomy and Astrophysics Science and Art 

Painting the Way to the Moon: An Impressionist Portrayal of a Rocket Scientist

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By Dan Spengler Ed Belbruno is a self-admitted motormouth. Painting the Way to the Moon, a new documentary about the mathematician and painter who previously worked for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), does not prove him wrong—it mostly features Belbruno talking about himself. Painting the Way to the Moon takes its title from Belbruno’s experience of finding inspiration for a ballistic capture trajectory to the moon in a painting he made, but ultimately struggles to find a clear identity. Belbruno tells most of his own backstory, with brief comments from…

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This artist's conception shows a blazar -- the core of an active galaxy powered by a supermassive black hole. The VERITAS array has detected gamma rays from a blazar known as PKS 1441+25. Researchers found that the source of the gamma rays was within the relativistic jet but surprisingly far from the galaxy's black hole. The emitting region is about five light-years away. Courtesy of M. Weiss/CfA Astronomy and Astrophysics 

Gamma Rays from a Galaxy Far, Far Away

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After traveling for about half the age of the universe, a flood of powerful gamma rays from a distant galaxy slammed into Earth’s atmosphere in April 2015. The gamma rays met our atmosphere and formed a cascade of light that fell onto the waiting mirrors of the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS) in Arizona. The resulting data have given astronomers a unique look into that faraway galaxy and the black hole engine at its heart. What Are Gamma Rays? Gamma rays are photons of light with very…

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Humans to Mars by 2030 Astronomy and Astrophysics 

We May Send Humans to Mars by 2030

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Our partners at ResearchGate recently spoke with Alfonso Davila from SETI, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, about what draws us to explore the red planet and beyond. Interested in Mars? Don’t miss this other article about the Martian atmosphere.  ResearchGate: What motivates you to explore living conditions – and possible life – on Mars? Davila: The motivation is twofold. On the one hand there is this nagging drive to understand life at the most fundamental levels (the “what is life?” question), and on the other hand there is this obsessive curiosity about the possibility of life elsewhere…

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