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Mysterious No More: Astronomers Used The Hubble To Solve The Blue Straggler Problem

How do blue stragglers defy the aging that turns their mates red? Blue stragglers are found in ancient star clusters, where they outshine stars the same age, looking far bluer and younger than their true age. Astrophysicists have tried to understand blue stragglers for decades. New research using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is finally revealing how these ageless stars come to be and why they thrive in quieter cosmic neighbourhoods. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/BfGkvai via IFTTT
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Gazing Into The Eye Of Sauron With The JWST

The Helix Nebula is one of the closest and brightest planetary nebula. It's what's left of a dying star and has nothing to do with planets. Our Sun will end up as one of these sumptuous displays, and a new JWST image reveals even more detail in the stunning nebula. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/731GTUs via IFTTT

Probing the Mysteries of the Solar Corona with ESA’s Proba-3

Some really unique science can be done during a total solar eclipse. Totality is the one time we can see the elusive corona of the Sun, the pearly white segment of our host star’s lower atmosphere where space weather activity originates. The trouble is, totality is fleeting. What researchers really need are eclipses on demand. ESA’s innovative Proba-3 mission does just that, by making use of a free-flying occulting disk. Launched in late 2024, we’re now seeing some unique science and images from the space observatory. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/Ms6CUGX via IFTTT

Mutations from Space Might Solve an Antibiotic Crisis

If humans are ever going to expand into space itself, it will have to be for a reason. Optimists think that reason is simply due to our love of exploration itself. But in history, it is more often a profit motive that has led humans to seek out new lands. So, it stands to reason that, in order for us to truly begin space colonization, we will have to have a business-related reason to do so. A new paper from the lab of Srivatsan Raman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and recently published in PLOS Biology, describes one potential such business case - genetically modifying bacteriophages to attack antibiotic resistant bacteria. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/0Ka6ZQE via IFTTT

A New Study of Lunar Rocks Suggests Earth's Water Might Not Have Come from Meteorites

High-precision oxygen isotopes in Apollo lunar soils reveal a persistent impactor fingerprint, showing that impacts contributed only a tiny fraction of Earth’s water. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/sCzyIX9 via IFTTT

Hunting For T-Tauri Stars In A Dark Cloud

The Hubble Mission Team has released another image of the space telescope's study of star formation. This image shows the dark cloud Lupus 3, a star-forming region about 500 light-years away. Lupus 3 contains bright young T-Tauri stars, and 2 hot young stars that are creating a beautiful nebula. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/Ez9M68N via IFTTT

ALMA Observes The Missing Link In Exoplanet Formation

Back in 2014, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) captured an image of a young protoplanetary disk around a young star named HL Tauri. The image showed gaps and rings in the disk, substructures indicating that young planets forming there. This meant that planet formation began around young stars a lot sooner than thought. ALMA is continuing its investigation of protoplanetary disks in its ARKS survey (ALMA survey to Resolve exoKuiper belt Substructures). from Universe Today https://ift.tt/NcH0YAS via IFTTT