Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

New study details atmosphere on 'hot Neptune' 260 light years away that 'shouldn't exist'

Astronomers have crunched data from NASA's TESS and Spitzer space telescopes to portray for the first time the atmosphere of a highly unusual kind of exoplanet dubbed a 'hot Neptune'.

October 23, 2020 Read more

Galactic archaeology

Computational astrophysics study modeled for the first time faint supernovae of metal-free first stars, yielding carbon-enhanced abundance patterns for star formation.

October 22, 2020 Read more

AI and photonics join forces to make it easier to find 'new Earths'

Scientists have developed a new type of sensor to measure and correct the distortion of starlight caused by viewing through the Earth's atmosphere, which should make it easier to study the possibility of life on distant planets.

October 21, 2020 Read more

Evidence of broadside collision with dwarf galaxy discovered in Milky Way

Nearly 3 billion years ago, a dwarf galaxy plunged into the center of the Milky Way and was ripped apart by the gravitational forces of the collision. Astrophysicists announced today that the merger produced a series of telltale shell-like formations of stars in the vicinity of the Virgo constellation, the first such 'shell structures' to be found in the Milky Way.

October 20, 2020 Read more

Ultraviolet shines light on origins of the solar system

In the search to discover the origins of our solar system, an international team of researchers has compared the composition of the sun to the composition of the most ancient materials that formed in our solar system: refractory inclusions in unmetamorphosed meteorites.

October 20, 2020 Read more

Astrophysics team lights the way for more accurate model of the universe

Light from distant galaxies reveals important information about the nature of the universe and allows scientists to develop high-precision models of the history, evolution and structure of the cosmos.

October 20, 2020 Read more

The Milky Way galaxy has a clumpy halo

Astronomers have determined our galaxy is surrounded by a clumpy halo of hot gases that is continually being supplied with material ejected by birthing or dying stars. This heated halo, called the circumgalactic medium, was the incubator for the Milky Way's formation some 10 billion years ago and could be where basic matter unaccounted for since the birth of the universe may reside.

October 19, 2020 Read more

The recipe for powerful quasar jets

Some supermassive black holes launch powerful beams of material, or jets, away from them, while others do not. Astronomers may now have identified why.

October 19, 2020 Read more

Star clusters are only the tip of the iceberg (w/video)

Star clusters have been part of the Imaginarium of human civilization for millennia. The brightest star clusters to Earth, like the Pleiades, are readily visible to the naked eye. Astronomers have now revealed the existence of massive stellar halos, termed coronae, surrounding local star clusters.

October 15, 2020 Read more

A billion tiny pendulums could detect the universe's missing mass

Scientists propose a novel method for finding dark matter, the cosmos's mystery material that has eluded detection for decades. The proposed experiment, in which a billion millimeter-sized pendulums would act as dark matter sensors, would be the first to hunt for dark matter solely through its gravitational interaction with visible matter.

October 14, 2020 Read more

Blinded by the light no more: Simulations show James Webb Telescope will reveal hidden galaxies

Two new studies find that the Webb will be able to reveal galaxies currently masked by powerful lights called quasars.

October 14, 2020 Read more

Modelling extreme magnetic fields and temperature variation on distant stars

New research is helping to explain one of the big questions that has perplexed astrophysicists for the past 30 years - what causes the changing brightness of distant stars called magnetars.

October 13, 2020 Read more

Death by spaghettification: Astronomers record last moments of star devoured by black hole

Using telescopes from around the world, astronomers have spotted a rare blast of light from a star being ripped apart by a supermassive black hole. The phenomenon, known as a tidal disruption event, is the closest such flare recorded to date at just over 215 million light-years from Earth, and has been studied in unprecedented detail.

October 12, 2020 Read more

Astronomers find x-rays lingering years after landmark neutron star collision

New, most complete start-to-finish view of neutron star merger rewrites the way scientists understand these events.

October 12, 2020 Read more

Vaporised metal in the air of an exoplanet

An international team of researchers studied the atmosphere of the ultra-hot exoplanet WASP-121b. In it, they found a number of gaseous metals. The results are a next step in the search for potentially habitable worlds.

October 8, 2020 Read more

New measurements of the solar spectrum verify Einstein's theory of General Relativity

An international team of researchers has measured, with unprecedented accuracy, the gravitational redshift of the Sun, a change in frequency of the lines in the solar spectrum which is produced when the light escapes from the gravitational field of the Sun on its way to Earth.

October 8, 2020 Read more

The black hole always chirps twice: Scientists find clues to decipher the shape of black holes

A team of gravitational-wave scientists reveals that when two black holes collide and merge, the remnant black hole 'chirps' not once, but multiple times, emitting gravitational waves - intense ripples in the fabric space and time - that inform us about its shape.

October 8, 2020 Read more

Researchers find 'missing link' between magnetars and rotation-powered pulsars

Astronomers have made observations of a new magnetar, called Swift J1818.0-1607, which challenges current knowledge about two types of extreme stars, known as magnetars and pulsars.

October 8, 2020 Read more