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Space and Astronomy News from Universe Today

  • White Dwarfs Are Actually…Yellow, Green, Pink, and Purple?

    Artist’s illustration of a white dwarf appearing greenish from the sodium-rich planetary debris that enriches its atmosphere. (Credit: Mark A Garlick/University of Warwick)

    The universe hosts a myriad of star types, including supergiants, giants, main sequence, red dwarfs, brown dwarfs, white dwarfs, and neutron stars. What makes these stars stand out are just their sizes, but their colors, as each one hosts a distinct color based on their surface temperature, specifically orange, red, blue, and white based on cooler to hotter temperatures. While the correlation between star colors and surface temperatures has long been known throughout astronomy, what if star colors could change based on specific criteria, including their atmosphere?

  • 27 Exoplanet Targets for the World's First Private Space Telescope

    An artist's illustration of 55 Cancri d, an exoplanet notable for being a Jupiter analog. It's one of the planets on a list of 27 targets for the Lazuli Space Telescope. It'll be the world's first private space telescope, and will use a coronagraph to image exoplanets. It's scheduled for a 2029 launch. Image Credit: NASA

    Get ready for the age of private space telescopes. The Lazuli Space Telescope will launch in a few years and part of its mission is to observe exoplanets. New research presents a list of 27 exoplanet targets, some of which are very well-known and will certainly benefit from deeper observations.

  • The Largest Canyon in the Solar System is Still Tectonically Active

    Artist's impression of the Valles Marineris canyon system on Mars. Credit: Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library

    Scientists at Imperial College London and Columbia University have found that the largest canyon system in the solar system is still active and shaping Mars today, billions of years after it first formed.

  • Saudi Arabia Joins the Search for Alien Civilizations

    Saudi Arabia has installed a pair of LaserSETI detectors in a region in a region named AlUla Manara, a site being established as the kingdom's first major astronomical observatory. They're part of a network of optical detectors will scan the heavens for laser signals from alien technological civilizations. Image Credit: LaserSETI.

    Saudi Arabia is joining the search for alien signals coming from the cosmos. They're collaborating with SETI in the endeavour. SETI has announced that two LaserSETI instruments will be positioned in Saudi Arabia, adding to a growing network of optical sensors designed to detect laser pulses that could come from alien technological civilizations.

  • Magnetic Field Reversals and Extinctions: The Correlation Won't Go Away.

    Geomagnetic reversals are when the Earth's magnetic poles switch positions. There have been almost 200 of them in the last 83 million years. Nobody has proven it yet, but the idea that they're related causally to extinctions won't go away, and new research found yet more links between them.

    Scientists have wondered about a connection between Earth's geomagnetic reversals, or pole flips, and mass extinctions. They've found correlations, but nothing convincing enough to remove healthy doubts. But new research found a period of time with a concentrated number of reversals that coincides with and extinction and Large Igneous Provinces. It's likely not definitive proof, but it's certainly intriguing.

  • JWST Reveals a Lopsided Alien World with Blistering Evening Winds

    Artist's depiction o WASP 17-b, with its egg-shaped atmosphere. Credit - Engine House and Hannah Wakeford

    Typically, when we think of exoplanets, we think of neat spheres floating directly in front of their star, which acts as a giant spotlight. From our vantage point, they would look more like two perfect two dimensional circles than spheres, though. But nature is almost never so clean-cut. A new paper published in Nature Astronomy from researchers at Cornell and the University of Bristol details the first-ever study of an exoplanet that is noticeably lopsided.

  • Advancing Astronomy at MIT with X-ray Reverberation Mapping

    Artist's concept of a supermassive black hole with an accretion disk and a relativistic jet. Credit: NASA

    Professor Erin Kara of MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research is helping advance our understanding of the most extreme objects in the Universe by analyzing X-ray reverberations and other astrophysical data.

  • Even the Rubin's Test Camera Produces Stunning Images

    IC 2177, or the Seagull Nebula, as captured by the Vera Rubin Observatory's Commissioning Camera in 2024. This image features the Seagull's head, a cloud of gas named Sharpless 2-292. Image Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA. Image Processing: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), D. de Martin & M. Zamani (NSF NOIRLab)

    The Vera Rubin Observatory's Commissioning Camera operated for about 7 weeks in 2024, before the observatory released its well-known first look images. It's an engineering camera, and its job was to test the VRO's equipment and procedures. Now, the VRO has released the ComCam's image of the Seagull nebula. It's a pretty stunning image for an engineering camera.

  • Two Disks in One: How Accretion Disks Drive Black Hole Jets

    This artist's illustration shows a rapidly-feeding supermassive black hole launching jets from its poles. For this to happen, the accretion disk has to have large-scale magnetic fields. But not all do, generating a contradiction. New research has an answer. Image Credit: Tohoku University.

    SMBH jets are driven by thick, hot accretion disks with powerful magnetic fields. But there's a bit of a paradox. Some SMBH produce jets, even though they appear to have thin, cold accretion disks. New research has solved this paradox, showing that disks can be truncated into an outer cold disk and an inner hot disk.

  • New Evidence for an Old Prediction: Recoiling Supermassive Black Holes

    This artist's impression shows a distant quasar, an extremely luminuos active galactic nuclei hosted by a supermassive black hole. We know that SMBH can merge, but theory says that in some mergers, the merger remnant recieves a powerful kick that drives it into a pendulum-like motion across the center of the galaxy. New research has uncovered statistical proof of these merger remnant SMBH. Image Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser.

    Theory says that during some SMBH mergers, the merger remnant receives a recoil kick from gravitational waves. Instead of sitting placidly in the galactic center, these recoiled SMBH are sent on a pendulum-like motion, back and forth through the galactic center. New research has found statistical evidence supporting their existence.