Universe Today

Universe Today

• What Telescope Will Be Needed to See the First Stars in the Universe? The Ultimately Large Telescope

  The oldest stars in the Universe are cloaked in darkness. Their redshift is so high, we can only wonder about them. The James Webb Space Telescope will be our most effective telescope for observing the very early Universe, and should observe out to z = 15. But even it has limitations. To observe the Universe’s …

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• Detecting the Neutrinos From a Supernova That’s About to Explode

  Neutrinos are puzzling things. They’re tiny particles, almost massless, with no electrical charge. They’re notoriously difficult to detect, too, and scientists have gone to great lengths to detect them. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory, for instance, tries to detect neutrinos with strings of detectors buried down to a depth of 2450 meters (8000 ft.) in the …

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• Dawn Patrol: Jupiter and Saturn at Opposition 2020

  Missing the planets in the first half of 2020? That’s all about to change, as the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn reach opposition in rapid succession this month, heralding a return to the dusk sky.

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• A Tabletop-sized Experiment Could Help in the Search for Dark Matter

  Dark matter is one of the least understood aspects in physics.  The evidence for dark matter is from its gravitational influence on galactic scales which cannot be explained by the presence of conventional matter.  Despite its large gravitational interactions, it is notoriously difficult to learn about dark matter as it does not interact with electromagnetic …

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• Electron Rocket’s 13th Launch Failed, Destroying its Satellite Payload

  In what would have been the 12th successful launch of their Electron rocket, Rocket Lab

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• The Corona Australis Molecular Cloud. Normally this Looks Like a Dark Blob in the Sky. But in Infrared, it Looks Like This.

  The Corona Australis is a constellation in the southern hemisphere. It’s name literally means “southern crown.” One of its features is the Corona Australis molecular cloud, home to a star-forming region containing young stars and proto-stars. It’s one of the closest star-forming regions to us, only about 430 light years away. The ESA has given …

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• The Moon Might Be More Metal-Rich Than We Thought

  A new study shows that the Moon is more metal-rich than previously thought. That has some far-reaching implications for our understanding of the Moon’s formation. If their results are solid, it means that we may need to re-think the giant impact hypothesis for the formation of the Moon. A team of scientists using the Lunar …

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• Amateur Astronomers Find a Brand New Storm on Jupiter

  Amateur astronomers have discovered a new storm near the Great Red Spot.

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• Betelgeuse Probably Dimmed Because of Enormous Starspots

  A few months ago we all watched as Betelgeuse dimmed. Between October 2019 and 22nd of February 2020 the star’s brightness dropped by a factor of about three. It went from magnitude 0.5, and from being the tenth-brightest star in the sky, to magnitude 1.7. Naturally, we all wondered what was happening. Would it go …

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• NGC 2275: An Absolute Unit of Galactic Flocculence

  The Hubble Space Telescope has the knack for finding every size and shape of galaxy imaginable – from small, medium to large, all the way up to that funky size of absolute units. This unusual galaxy, named NGC 2775, is incredibly fluffy-looking, or flocculent. It’s definitely a spiral, but instead of well-defined, organized spiral arms, …

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